Owen Yalandja

Owen Yalandja (born 1961) is Aboriginal Australian carver, painter and singer of the Kuninjku people from western Arnhem Land, Australia. A senior member of the Dangkorlo clan, who are the Indigenous custodians of an important site related to female water spirits known as yawkyawk, Yalandja has become internationally renowned for his painted carvings of these spirits, as well as his paintings on eucalyptus bark.

Biography Born in 1961, Owen Yalandja belongs to the Kuninjku people within Maningrida (Northern Territory of Central Arnhem Land). He is now a senior member of the Dangkorlo clan, which means that he has the responsibility to be custodians of a yawkyawk site (Yirridjdja moiety) in the Mirrayar billabong.

Owen Yalandja was known for his singing at the yawkyawk ceremonies, as well as his carved representations of the yawkyawk spirits. Kuningbal began experimenting and inventing new ways to carving and sculpt mimih spirits. It is Aboriginal tradition that an artist like Kuningbal will teach the next generation of male artists how to produce similar artwork and the meaning behind it; Yalandja and his brother, Cruose Kurddal, both learned from their father the skills and techniques needed to make these kinds of figures. It wasn't until after Kuningbal's death in 1984 Kuningbal's original style can be seen replicated in Kurddal's Mimih spirit (1985), shown in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Yalandja, on the other hand, began experimenting and expanding beyond his father's teachings; he created new styles, techniques, and content.

While greatly inspired by his father's technique, Yalandja and his brother made the carvings larger to better represent the spirits. In 1990, he introduced a new 'V'-like technique to better indicate the yawkyawk 's individual scales, giving the figure a more watery, "scaly sheen." Yalandja recalls learning from his father the dot decoration technique for scales, but he says he likes to make the yawkyawk figures "according to [his] own individual ideas... this style is [his] own, no one else does them like this." Additionally, the movement in the wood helps to depicting how she may look while swimming. Lorrkkon hold human skeletal remains, not the entire body, and are made for both commercial art reasons as well as ceremonial reasons. When made for the art market, the artist is able to choose what to paint on the hollow-logs, making them more like painted sculptures, carvings, or three-dimensional bark art. Yalandja created lorrkkon for art market, painting the log with the same technique he created for the scales of the yawkyawks. This pattern itself does not hold sacred meaning, thus is it considered "outside" and "non-representational; however, any clan member or person with knowledge of Kuninjku customs will understand that this design represents the scales of the yawkyawk spirit. One example of this kind of lorrkkin is his Ndalkodjek Yawkyawk made in 2017 (157.5 cm).

Yalandja won the Bark Painting Award at the 2023 NATSIAA awards.

Art style Many people think of Aboriginal art as only dot paintings or bark painting. Owen Yalandja changes this narrative through his carving techniques and sculpture making skills. When Yalandja's father died he truly began his artistic journey. Yalandja started experimenting with the painted designs and use of colour and, while his brother Kurddal continued carving mimih, Yalandja began carving yawk yawk. While Paddy Compass Namatbara displayed yawk yawk through painting Owen yalandja took the approach of representing yawk yawk through sculpture.

Owen Yalandja states, "My father... taught me and my brother... how to carve. He only did mimih spirit figures and when I first started as an artist I used to make mimih figures as well. Then, I decided to change and to start representing yawkyawk spirit figures." The piece displays his carving abilities through the small carving he makes on the body of the Yawk Yawk. It also shows the precision of his carving with the detail he puts on the ends of the tail. He is well known for his use of dots and he represents the dots on the body of the Yawk Yawk. Along with incorporating dots, similar to how his father did, he uses his own techniques of making very small carvings on the body of the yawk yawk to represent the scales on the body. While Yalandja is seen as the leader in innovation in this style, these techniques of carving are shared amongst the Kuninjku artists. Art Gallery of South Australia Australian Museum, Sydney The British Museum Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory National Gallery of Victoria Queensland Art Gallery National Gallery of Australia Australian Museum, Sydney Musée des Confluences, Lyon, France

Significant exhibitions

2000: Biennale of Sydney. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 26 May – 30 July 2000. 2001: Outside in: Research Engagements with Arnhem Land Art, Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, Canberra, 30 August - 7 October 2001. 2004: Crossing Country: The Alchemy of Western Arnhem Land Art. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 25 September - 12 December 2004. 2007: One sun, One moon: Aboriginal Art in Australia. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 03 Jul 2007–02 Dec 2007 2007-2009: Culture Warriors: The Australian Indigenous Art Triennial. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 13 October 2007 – 10 February 2008; American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center, Washington, D.C., 10 September – 8 December 2009. Crossing Cultures: The Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Art. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, September 15, 2012 – March 10, 2013; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH, April 11–July 14, 2013. 2016-17: Sentient Lands. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 4 Jun 2016 – 8 Oct 2017. 2019-2020: The Inside World: Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Memorial Poles. Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, MI; The Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA; Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami, FL.