GINGER RILEY MUNDUWALAWALA, Untitled (Warru and Marawulu), 1992

GINGER RILEY MUNDUWALAWALA Marra language, c.1936 - 2002 Untitled (Warru and Marawulu), 1992 acrylic on Arches paper 49 x 68 cm; 74.5 x 90.5 cm (framed) signed front bottom: GiNGER.RiLEY PROVENANCE Painted in the Ngukurr region, South East Arnhem Land Sotheby's, Contemporary and Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, Victoria, 18 June 1995, Lot 280 Private Collection, New South Wales Ginger Riley Munduwalawala's paintings return repeatedly to his mother's Country around the Limmen Bight River in the Gulf of Carpentaria, transforming its geography and ancestral narratives into a distinctive and immediately recognisable visual language. Rather than depicting landscape in a conventional sense, Riley mapped Country through a recurring constellation of places, ancestral beings and events, each carrying a particular significance within the larger story. Dominating this composition are the Four Archers, the monumental rock formations that rise from the plains of Riley's mother's Country. Riley described this place as "the centre of the earth, where all things start and finish." The Four Archers were created during the ancestral journey of Garimala, the great taipan associated with the formation of the landscape. Ngak Ngak, the white-breasted sea eagle and Riley's totem, is another of the artist's most enduring motifs. Appearing as a powerful presence within the composition, Ngak Ngak acts as a sentinel or guardian, watching over Country and the ancestral events unfolding within it. Two snakes, representing Garimala, rise above the eagle and landscape, bringing the ancestral narrative directly into the physical geography of Country. Ngak Ngak's repeated appearance throughout Riley's work has also been understood as a metaphorical stand-in for the artist himself: an observer bearing witness to the creative acts of his ancestors. © GINGER RILEY MUNDUWALAWALA / Copyright Agency, 2026

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