Midawarr Harvest

Midawarr Harvest : The Art of Mulkum Wirrpanda and John Wolseley edited by Will Stubbs, John Wolseley. From the National Museum of Australia. 

I made this painting after eating bundjunu [bush orange] ... I was thinking about how we used to eat when I was a child ... I was thinking about nowadays ... and about the rubbish that our children eat.

And so Mulkun Wirrpanda, a senior elder of the Dhudi-Djapu clan, resolved to paint the traditional food plants of her Yolnu community to safeguard this knowledge for future generations. The suite of bark paintings she created is the subject of this lavishly illustrated catalogue for the National Museum of Australia's new exhibition, Midawarr/Harvest: The Art of Mulkun Wirrpanda and John Wolseley. Providing a natural counterpoint to these works is a vast and beautifully detailed scroll by renowned landscape painter John Wolseley. The supporting text draws on the wealth of Yolnu botanical knowledge, describing the food and medicinal plants featured in the paintings and how they are collected, prepared and used.