Footnotes

• PROVENANCE
  Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala (cat. 2814T, 2836L, 2852Z)
  Raft Artspace, Darwin
  The Harding Family Collection, Sydney
  
  EXHIBITED
  Cross Currents: Focus on contemporary Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 18 September - 26 November 2007
  My Country - Two, Noosa Long Weekend Festival 2008, The Studio - Cooroy Mountain Park, Noosa, 2008 (illus. in exhibition catalogue)
  
  LITERATURE
  John Stringer, Cross Currents: Focus on contemporary Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2007, pp. 12, 134-135 (detail illus.), 139 (illus.)
  
  
  Exhibited in 2007 as part of curator John Stringer's Cross Currents at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, these three larrakitj were displayed as part of a group with four accompanying bark paintings. Of the artist's work Stringer noted,
  
  'Although the elegant webs and crisp pattern of triangles painted by Djirrirra Wunungmurra display remarkable freehand precision, their origin is not in mathematics or mechanical regularity. Her Fish Trap Design is a traditional motif inherited through clan lineage, adapted by the artist in accordance with Indigenous tradition specific to her identity.
  
  Like (Hilarie) Mais, Djirrirra structures her work on a web of referential anchors, cleverly consolidated within a larger grid of rectangular blocks. Parallel ranks of triangles make a ninety-degree change of direction as they progress around the pole. It is a flexible modular system and adjustable frame of reference that, despite the idiosyncrasies of each log, enables the artist to maintain consistent proportions as decoration is completed sector by sector.
  
  With the purity of their simple design, pristine materials and skillful execution, as well as their inventive adaptation of the grid, Djirrirra's poles provide plenty of spiritual highs for admirers of minimal art who can perceive pattern as part of an infinite continuity. Yet her technique, and the subtle variations and informality of her patterns, place them apart from Western art, and the true meaning of her infinite mesh is allied to mythology and tradition.'1
  
  1. John Stringer, Cross Currents: Focus on contemporary Australian art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2007, p. 12