MARINGKA BAKER
— A SURVEY
2021
THIS SURVEY IS LONG OVERDUE, PERHAPS BECAUSE MARINGKA IS A QUIET, CONTENT WOMAN LIVING IN HER DREAM PLACE, DOING WHAT SHE LOVES. SHE IS NOT FLAMBOYANT OR OVERTLY AMBITIOUS, SHE IS HOWEVER A SENIOR WOMAN WHO RETAINS A STAGGERING BACK CATALOGUE OF PHENOMENAL ANCIENT LORE OVER A VAST AREA OF COUNTRY ACROSS THE NAANYATJARRA AND PITJANJATJARA LANDS.
Minyma Kutjara Tjukurpa (the creation story of the two sisters). The big sister was travelling with her younger sister back to their homeland. The little sister was reluctant to head further and further north as she had been living with a different family near the ocean to the south. She had been lost a long time and didn’t know this country the big sister was showing her. Her sister gave her a piggyback and tried to comfort her. She was teaching her all about the country they travelled through. Sometimes when they stopped, they performed Inma (sacred singing and dancing). They camped at Punuwara and Irrunytju rock hole before heading further north to Docker River.”
— DR CHRISTINE NICHOLLS
Maringka Baker’s exceptional compositional ability combined with her adroit use of traditional iconographic elements and her left-of-field use of colour point to an artist who has found her own unique artistic ‘voice.’”
— DR CHRISTINE NICHOLLS
Maringka’s green abstracted landscapes strike the back of the retina and elicit a sensitivity in the viewer we can extrapolate to the kind of awe you may experience when encountering an oasis in the desert.”
— VIVIEN ANDERSON
Tjukurpa – known in (inadequate) English translation as the ‘Dreamtime’, or ‘Dreaming’ – lies at the heart of traditionally oriented Indigenous artistic production. Unlike Christianity or Judaism, which may be glossed as ‘abstract’ religions, where the spiritual is generally distinguished from the secular or the profane, Aboriginal religion is pre -eminently practical, literally grounded in local landscapes. For tradition-orientated Aboriginal Australians, the sacred and the profane are not distinct, separate spheres, as is the case in many of the world’s religions. ‘Dreamings’ and ‘Dreaming narratives’ always relate to specific tracts of land. Not only are Dreamings and Dreaming narratives site-specific, but for tradition-oriented Indigenous Australian people, religious belief is inseparable from the land itself, regardless of the language group to which an individual or family belongs.”
— DR CHRISTINE NICHOLLS
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