Otis Hope Carey

Stockroom

NGALUNGGIRR MIINGGI – HEALING SPIRIT

We call the ocean Gaagal – it’s a really important clan totem and holds a lot of healing elements for us. I started painting Healing Spirit soon after my grandmother, a Gumbaynggirr woman, passed; it’s about her going back into the ocean. The whole body of work is about us healing as one, and us knowing she’s back with the ocean, back home.

The ochre red backdrop I sometimes use for my work represents where my grandmother was born, in the dunes at Red Rock near Coffs Harbour. For her to be born in the dunes and then to be back home in the water is quite a beautiful story to tell. For me, black, another colour I use as a backdrop, is the night sky – a lot of the stars signify certain dreamtime stories. And it also represents the colour of our people with our black skin.

The paintings of Ngalunggirr Miinggi are entangled, but soft at the same time. The lines represent connection to Country, the spiritual being – basically being connected to the Earth. The dots are the struggles and the healing elements, reflecting the armour around my family. When I’m doing them, I think about my grandmother a lot, so the dots are like medicine. I always leave some gaps in my paintings, which are the past, present and future for me. Working on the past, healing the past; being in the present and working on the present; healing towards the future and making sure I don’t pass intergenerational trauma onto my children.

These paintings are my way of showing people that a healing process can be a beautiful process. I’d like to think they are healing other Indigenous people as well as healing our relationship with non-Indigenous people.