Darby Jampijinpa Ross, 1905-2005, LIWIRRINGA JUKURRPA (BURROWING SKINK DREAMING)

synthetic polymer paint on linen  
bears artist's name and Warlukurlangu Artists catalogue number 114/90 on the reverse  
92 BY 184CM  

Provenance: 
Painted at Yuendumu in 1989 
Warlukurlangu Artists, Yuendumu 
Donald Kahn Collection  

Exhibited: 
Aboriginal Art from the Collection of Donald Kahn, Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Florida, 1991; Carolino Augusteum Museum, Salzburg, The Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Naprstkovo Museum, Prague and The Museum of Ethnology, Warsaw during 1992-1993   Dreamings - Tjukurrpa: Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert, The Donald Kahn Collection, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, 26 July-16 October 1994 
Australian Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert- The Donald Kahn Collection, Fruit Market Gallery, Edinburgh, 3 December 1994-28 January 1995 
Desert Dreaming: Australian Aboriginal Art, Albertina, Vienna, 15 June - 26 August 2007  

Literature: 
Geoffrey Bardon and Vivien Johnson, Australian Aboriginal Art from the Collection of Donald Kahn, Miami: Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, 1991, p.56, cat.no.25 (iIlus.), p.79 
Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker (ed.), Dreamings - Tjukurrpa: Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert, The Donald Kahn Collection, Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1994, cat.no.25, pp.120-121 (colour illus.).

Cf. Burrowing Skink Dreaming at Parrikirlangu, 1986, in P. Sutton, (ed.), Dreamings. The art of Aboriginal Australia, Melbourne: Viking in association with The Asia Society Galleries, New York, 1988, p.104, fig. 144, cat.no.39

Another of Darby Ross's favourite subjects, the ancestral Liwirringki is associated with Warlu, the great Fire Dreaming. The site of this work is Ngarldingdingki, west of Yuendumu, and it depicts fire sweeping across the landscape: the red represents the fires at night, the white its smoke; the black is burnt grass; and the yellow is the dust kicked up by lizards as they flee the flames.
 
This painting is sold with an accompanying Warlukurlangu Artists certificate