Painted by George Jomeri at Mowanjum in 1975
Kim Akerman Collection
Mary Macha, Perth, Western Australia
The Thomas Vroom Collection, The Netherlands

FILMOGRAPHY
FLOATING…like wind blow’em about, Michael Edols (dir), 1975 Eastman colour 16mm, 72 mins, Ronin Films, ACT

Painted on a fragile piece of Kimberley bark, the holes in the surface have been filled by the artist with a bush resin which has darkened and spread into the bark over time. Many of the pigments are faded and there are a few minor areas of pigment loss scattered throughout. Remaining pigments appear stable. No repair or restoration.
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This bark painting was made during the filming of Floating, Like Wind Blow‘em About. Made by director-producer Michael Edols, this film revealed the problems realised by the elders in a Kimberley community as they watched traditional values being eroded by the impact of the modern world. In a scene in the film George Jomeri can be seen working on this and another bark. The paintings were abandoned in the bush area behind Mowanjum and re-discovered at a later date, when Kim Akerman was photographing men preparing for a re-enactment of a coffin-return ceremony.

The haunting minimally depicted Wanj♛ina heads are strongly reminiscent of the weathered faces that can be seen as ghostly images on the walls of many rock shelters on🍌 the north Kimberley plateau.

Michael Edols recalls the making of this film, “The Tribal circles of elders of the Wunan Lore and Law were specific with their brief and I found myself enlisted as their ‘whitefella film man’. Unlike the companion film Lalai Dreamtime the task requested was to use film as a means to hold up a mirror to the younger generation, who at the time had left behind their Aboriginal traditions and culture. The intention was to make a direct appeal to their sons and daughters. The elders said that by not listening to ancestral Wanjina wisdom and the lore passed down to tꦐhem the younger generation would wander, ‘floating…like wind blow’em about’.” Ibid p.7