Milmilngkan, 2025

Semeria is a painter and sculptor, specialising in bark painting, dolobbo bim, and carvings that depict the spirit beings, such as yawkyawk and mimih, residing on her clan estate, Kurulk. She is the daughter of the late internationally acclaimed artists John Mawurndjul AM and Kay Lindjuwanga, and is part of the next generation of Kuninjku artists. She was trained by her father Mawurndjul, who handed down permissions for her to paint the designs of Wak (Black Crow) and Mankabo, the creek that runs from Milmingkan to Kurrurldul outstations. Semeria worked closely together with her father, sometimes even assisting on the same paintings together. Like other Kuninjku artists, Wurrkidj maintains the cultural knowledge and practices of working with natural materials: ochres which are mixed with water and PVA fixative and applied with manyilk (sedge grass) to bark (stingybark) in the Wet season and lorrkkon (hollow log burial poles) and spirit carvings in the Dry season. She primarily engages the red, yellow, black and white palette of her father, but achieves a softer effect.

Artist Semeria Wurrkidj has depicted Milmilngkan, an outstation some 50km inland from Maningrida, and home of her late father, John Mawurndjul AM. It is a picturesque site near a billabong, and it is said that underneath the water lies the power of Ngalyod (the rainbow serpent). Semeria depicts the power of the place with rarrk (cross-hatching) which contains Mardayin power.
Kuninjku people say there are two Rainbow serpents. One is Yingarna, who is said to have been the original creator of all ancestral beings, the ‘first mother’. Yingarna’s first born is Ngaloyd. Yingarna, or her son Ngalyod, are a common subject on contemporary Kuninjku bark paintings.

Ngalyod is very important in Kuninjku cosmology and is associated with the creation of all sacred sites, djang, in Kuninjku clan lands. For example, ancestral stories relate how creator or ancestral beings had travelled across the country and had angered Ngalyod who swallowed them and returned to the earth to create the site. Today, Ngalyod protects these sites, and its power is present in each one.

Ngalyod has both powers of creation and destruction and is most strongly associated with rain, monsoon seasons and rainbows which are a manifestation of Ngalyod’s power and presence. Ngalyod is associated with the destructive power of the storms and with the plenty of the wet season, being both a destroyer and a giver of life. Ngalyod’s power controls the fertility of the country and the seasons.