Bark painting 'Galawu - Stringy bark house', by George Milpurrurru, 1985

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Type: Bark paintings
Date: 1985
Place: Ramingining, Central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia; Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Materials: Bark, Binder, Pigment
Collection: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs Art (ATSIAA) collection no. 1
Accession number: 2007.0053.1024

Description

A bark painting worked with ochres on bark. It features two horizontal bands of crosshatching at the top of the painting below which is a panel of broad black and yellow vertical stripes. Underneath these are five black human figures and a small sunshaped motif.The lower section of the painting is made up of two yellow arches with two red arches above these and two central tree shapes. There are black human figures enclosed by the arches and beside the tree trunks. The painting has a crosshatched background.

Galawa – Stringybark house (handwritten on reverse of 2007.0053.1024).

About the collection

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs Art collection comprises 2050 artworks and other objects. The artworks - which numerically dominate the collection - were produced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities throughout Australia. The accumulation of these artworks into a single collection has resulted from the choices and selections made during a 38 year period by a variety of staff working for the Council for Aboriginal Affairs (CAA), the Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA), the Aboriginal Development Commission (ADC) and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) at the national, regional and local levels. The collection spans the years following the 1967 referendum, when dramatic changes in the governance of Aboriginal people took place, up to 2005 when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission was dissolved. It provides a snapshot of the diversity and changes in Indigenous art and its representation which occurred during the period of its formation. The small number of 'non-art' objects in the collection is also significant in providing insights into the working of the various Commonwealth bodies involved in Indigenous affairs. As well as the significance of many of the individual pieces, the collection is also significant as a whole, as a complex artefact stemming from Australia's history of governance of Australian Indigenous peoples.

Read live from the Museum's Collection API (12/11/2026, 6:16:08 am). Record last updated by the Museum 2025-02-23. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.