Mick Makani Wilingarr

Mick Makani Wilinggarr (1905–1985) was an Aboriginal artist from Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Makani was born at Gatji Creek in central Arnhem Land around 1905. He belongs to the Mildjingi clan and Yirritja moiety, and his language group was Djinang. Makani was a major figure in the development of bark painting in Australia.
==Early life==
As a young man, Makani was jailed for throwing a spear at a staff member at the Methodist mission station where he lived. After his release, Makani became a bark painter and later a high ceremonial leader of his people.
In 1937, Makani met Australian anthropologist Donald Thompson and painted him a series of barking paintings, including the ancestral dog, which is sacred to his people, and the Mildjingi minytgi, a red, black and white triangle symbolizing seasonal rain. 
In the 1940s and 50s, Makani established a significant reputation as a bark painter working on the island of Milingimbi. After a permanent settlement was established in 1957, Makani relocated to Maningrida, where he continued to paint from his nearby outstation.
In 1963, Makani was filmed painting at Maningrida by David Attenborough for his film and book Quest under Capricorn. In 2020, the naturalist described the meeting as one of the fondest memories of his career.
==Preparation for art==
David Attenborough described Makani's process at length, noting:Makani tends to have high standards for the bark pieces he uses. Nine out of ten times he rejected the barks at a glance. Occasionally he took a tentative chop at a trunk with the axe, but the bark, he said, was too thin, or else it did not separate freely from the wood beneath. The bark of some was cracked, and others had too many knot holes.
Once Makani selected his bark, he would trim off the outer fibrous layers of the bark carefully. With these shavings, he lit a fire on which he threw the curling sheet, inner side downwards, The heart was not sufficient to burn the bark, but enough to turn some of its sap into steam and make the whole piece pliable.
Normally, Makani would work with four pigments. In a dry rocky bed of a stream, he collected pebbles of limonite— a hydrated iron oxide. He assessed their quality by scratching them on a boulder. If they left yellow or red marks, he kept them. From a pit, dug among the mangroves by the shore, he obtained a white kaolin. He grinned up charcoal to produce the black color. However, in addition to the red limonite pebbles, he had another ochre which was a richer deeper red. This was not of local origin, but came from somewhere to the south and was traded from the people in whose tribal territory it occurred. This ochre is accordingly very precious, and Makani kept it in his dilly bag, carefully wrapped in a packet of paper bark. Another necessary material to produce his work is the fleshy stems of the dendrobium orchid, which grew on the high branches of the gum trees.
==Art style==
Through Makani Wilingarr's artistic journey, he constantly tries to reinterpret traditional designs painted on the body during ceremonies. Specifically, he sought to transform sacred designs into compelling contemporary visual statements. While traditionally these designs used ritual music and dance to express the presence of ancestral spirits, they have been transformed into two-dimensional surfaces, creating a memorable metaphor for the connection between the body in space and the indivisible presence of ancestors. 
According to Joanna Bose, Macagni's paintings were the earliest translations of some of the patterns and designs that had previously been painted only on bodies, sacred objects, and rock surfaces. "Major Yorungu painters from East Arnhem Land, such as Madalba artist Marawi Mundukur, produced a large number of complex and detailed works that demonstrate the depth of cultural knowledge, the extraordinary painting skills, and the willingness of these veterans to share their epistemology with the outside world.
As Makani was from the Mildjingi clan, his works are often related to ancestral spirits. This clan design can sometimes referred to the clouds that bring the seasonal monsoonal rains. This is in stark contrast to minytji of the Djapu tribe in eastern Arnhem Land, where the same type of cloud is characterized by lines in a square.
==Collections==
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of Western Australia
Glasgow Museums
Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Victoria
University of Melbourne
University of New South Wales
Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
Category:1905 births
Category:Australian people
Category:Australian Aboriginal artists
Category:1985 deaths