Ankung Djang, Karrakbal dja Murrngno – Sugar Bag, Moon and Bones – Lorraine Kabbindi White

Lorraine Kabbindi White

Lorraine Kabbindi White is a Kunmok artist with spiritual connections and inherited responsibilities as djungkay (ritual manager/ caretaker) for Ankung Djang (Bush Honey Dreaming) sites of the Mok clan estate, situated among the spectacular, precipitous gorges and rugged escarpment of the ‘Stone Country’ in the western Arnhem Plateau.

Born in Larrakia country, Darwin, Kabbindi grew up in Kakadu and Western Arnhem Land, spending time with family members in Jabiru, Kunbarlanja (Gunbalanya), and the remote homeland communities of Kamarrkawarn and Kabulwarnamyo, the latter established by her grandfather, renowned artist, and leader, the late Bardayal ‘Lofty’ Nadjamerrek AO.

Kabbindi’s maternal grandparents, Mary Koliwarra Nadjamerrek and Bardayal played a key role in her childhood upbringing, bestowing upon her an intimate knowledge of Country. They taught her about their Ancestral creation sites, associated stories and ceremonies, plants, animals, walking routes and place names, as the old people before had taught them.

In the 2022 publication This is Stone Country¹, profiling Bininj artists of the Kakadu and Western Arnhem Land region, Kabbindi recalls the day her grandparents took her, aged seven, on a helicopter flight over Mok country, pointing out to and naming the places below. She describes hearing through the static of the headset, the clear, sweet voice of her grandfather naming places below, and as she repeated after him the name for each place, acknowledging for the first time in her young life a strong spiritual connection and belonging to her country.

Creative and curious from an early age, Kabbindi would observe her grandfather Bardayal seated on the ground applying delicate and methodical brushstrokes to the paintings he was working on, later asking if she could paint with him. Acclaimed internationally for his ochre paintings on bark and paper, and later printmaking, Bardayal is recognised as one of the last of his generation to paint on the ancient gallery walls of the ‘Stone Country’ – in his own dynamic style, as well as in the ‘X-ray’ style characteristic of the West Arnhem plateau. With Bardayal’s encouragement and guidance, Kabbindi mastered his delicate parallel hatching technique and began to create her own works of art, on paper at first, depicting stories and subjects intrinsic to Mok country.

He’d be telling me the stories, and what the paintings mean, the lines, the colours, he would sing songs to me of the actual painting…. it was just fascinating…. and from there, I would sit next to him and learn every bit of art he had.²

Kabbindi was a student at Jabiru Area School when she received a scholarship to attend Toorak College, Mt Eliza in Naarm (Melbourne) for the final three years of her schooling, and where she successfully completed the VCE in 2009. Kabbindi currently resides in Melbourne and visits her family and Mok country in Western Arnhem Land at every opportunity.

I have observed Kabbindi over the years exploring and developing her art practice, modestly and perspicaciously. She enjoys working with ochres, sheets of bark and hollow logs sourced from her country, but also paints on canvas and paper – with ochre, as well as acrylic paint and ink. She has been commissioned to create works of art, entered art awards, participated in solo and collaborative exhibitions, and generously worked with students, encouraging them to tell their own stories through their art.

In December 2010, the year after her grandfather, Bardayal ‘Lofty’ Nadjamerrek passed away, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney launched a retrospective of his paintings. Along with several of his other grandchildren Kabbindi was commissioned by the MCA to undertake a large-scale mural as an additional feature of this exhibition.

Kabbindi’s first solo exhibition Kundenge bok (Footsteps) was held in 2012 at Qdos Fine Arts in Lorne, Victoria. In 2014, Kabbindi’s painting Guardians was selected for, and sold at Salon Des Refuses, an annual exhibition of works created by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists submitted for but not accepted into the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA). Her painting Death and Moon was selected for Salon Des Refuses 2020.

In 2016, Kabbindi’s exquisite, finely composed ink and ochre works on paper were included in the exhibition Manme Mayh: Gardens of the Stone Country III at Nomad Art Gallery, Darwin. Her next exhibition – The next generation: Lorraine Kabbindi White & Genevieve Kemarr Loy was held at Lauraine Diggins Fine Art in 2017.

Kabbindi’s paintings, along with some of her grandfather’s prints were shown in the 2018 exhibition Barring-bul (Many Walks), a collaboration between Melbourne Indigenous Transition School and Trinity College, drawing together a collection of artworks from the Northern Territory and Victoria to showcase the breadth of artistic practice from the communities with whom they work.

In 2020 Lorraine was commissioned by Trinity Grammar, Kew to create four artworks which are now installed in The Drum meeting room within the Tudor Centre. In 2021, Kabbindi entered her bark painting Karrakbal Kunmurrng (Moon Bones) in King’s School Art Prize

As an artist, Kabbindi demonstrates highly refined creativity and finesse. Inspired by her grandfather she holds the stories he passed on to her so dearly. These stories inform and compel her to produce ethereal and striking artworks in a new way of telling – a tangible link to her Ancestors and the ancestral landscape. Kabbindi captures the essence of her grandfather Bardayal’s unique painting style while also creating her own innovative interpretations. Her works of art are held in private collections in Australia and around the world.

 

Eve Chaloupka, 2023

 

¹     North & Lorraine Kabbindi White, (editor.) & Tiffany Parker, (photographer.) & Nina Fitzgerald, (photographer.) (2022). This is Stone Country. NORTH, Darwin, NT

²    Bark painting sings of grandfather’s stories, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 December 2013.