Nym Bunduk bark Painting
Aboriginal bark painting by Nym Bunduk from Port Keats depicting ancestral designs
Object type: Aboriginal Bark Painting
Locality: Port Keats Arnhem Land Northern Territory Australia
Artist: Attributed to Nym Bunduk
Circa: 1970
Width: 72.5 cm
Description: This outstanding early bark painting from Port Keats embodies the restrained elegance and ceremonial power that define the finest pre-1960 works from the region. Its composition—an intricate, rhythmic field of spirals and punctuated dot clusters—is stylistically consistent with the hand of Nym Bunduk, one of the few senior painters whose inherited design rights expressly included the use of spiralling motifs. Within the Wadeye cultural context, the authority to paint spirals is highly restricted; Bunduk’s known works share the same disciplined geometry, fine dotting, and confident curvilinear flow seen in the present example.
The designs on this bark belong to a deep ceremonial lineage. Like many of the earliest Port Keats paintings, the artist draws directly upon the iconography associated with Tjuringa—ancestral objects whose engraved surfaces encode sacred narratives. These same motifs entered sand mosaic traditions, where elders rendered ancestral designs onto the ground during ceremony. The present painting is a rare and sophisticated translation of those ephemeral ground and object-based expressions onto the medium of bark, preserving the purity of the tradition without reference to figurative elements.
Indeed, one of the most remarkable qualities of this work is its complete dedication to non-figurative, classical design. Where later bark paintings from the wadeye increasingly incorporated anthropomorphic or zoomorphic iconography, early Port Keats works such as this are distinguished by their abstraction, aesthetic restraint, and ceremonial integrity. The repeated spirals—each formed with confident, concentric bands of ochre—are framed by meticulously applied dotting, creating a vibrating surface energy that is both visually compelling and spiritually resonant.
The bark itself is cut into a striking lozenge shape—another hallmark of early production—carefully trimmed and smoothed at the edges before being prepared as a painting surface. This shape not only enhances the overall visual harmony but also echoes the contours of wooden ritual objects whose forms similarly taper at each end.
The entire bark is covered in a fine coat of shelac giving a very slight gloss
Painted with natural pigments whose warm tonalities have aged beautifully, the work retains exceptional surface integrity. The ochres sit within the grain of the bark, the dotting is crisp and undisturbed, and the entire composition retains the commanding presence associated with the region’s finest early pieces.
Works attributable to Nym Bunduk are exceedingly scarce, and early Port Keats barks of this quality—purely geometric, ceremonial in origin, and executed with absolute authority—are tightly held by major institutions and collectors. This example stands as a superb and culturally significant painting from one of northern Australia’s most intellectually complex and aesthetically powerful artistic traditions.
Price: $2500 AUD
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