This artist is Yirawala.
He came from west Arnhem Land and he was one of the most influential and greatest artists of the region.
He was called, in fact, 'the Picasso of Arnhem Land'.
He was a man of high ritual status who influenced a number of younger artists,
many of whom are actually represented in the exhibition Old Masters.
Yirawala is one of the two key artists in the exhibition Old Masters.
This painting, Totemic Crocodile, is an excellent example of the way he introduced innovations into bark painting.
Here we see a variation on a clan pattern.
On one side of the crocodile you will see a series of parallel lines,
whereas on the other you will see sections of angled or diagonal lines, which in fact are a variation on the same clan pattern.
In the history of European art, a lot of innovation is introduced by younger experimental artists,
whereas in Arnhem Land, especially in Aboriginal Australia, it is the older, more senior artists
who have the knowledge and the rights to actually change things who introduce the innovations.
And Yirawala is precisely one of those artists.
The National Museum wanted to put on the exhibition Old Masters of bark paintings from Arnhem Land in northern Australia
to show the beauty and significance of bark painting as a form of high art.
The National Museum's collection contains over 2000 bark paintings.
It is the largest collection in the world.
Old Masters focuses on 122 of these paintings, many of which have never been seen in Australia before.
In Old Masters we wanted to also explore how traditions are passed down
from one generation to the next.
So we're looking at artistic families or dynasties of artists, and also the relationship between master artists and their students.
This is a painting called 'Tree Spirit' by David Malangi from central Arnhem Land.
It represents the spirit of a being that is associated with death,
and David has a particular way of drawing these macabre spirit beings.
You can see in this painting how the claws are extending out,
and also the figure is drawn in profile so that we can see the ribs in a style of painting we called X- ray.
David Malangi was also colloquially known as 'dollar Dave',
because one of his paintings associated with this one about the great ancestral hunter
was used on the original $1 note when decimal currency was introduced in Australia in 1966.
The interesting thing about this painting is that it is autobiographical.
It shows that bark painting can reflect an artist's own experience in the modern world.
The artist is Mawalan Marika from eastern Arnhem Land, and the painting is called 'Sydney from the Air'.
It was painted as one of a series after he visited the city of Sydney
for the first time in his life in 1961.
Mawalan has used the traditional techniques of east Arnhem Land painting, the use of the cross hatching,
to show buildings and the roads that join them as if seen from an aeroplane.
In fact, it is also like a map of country.
On one side of the picture you can see the coast and the harbour of Sydney.
This artist is Narritjin Maymuru from eastern Arnhem Land.
He is one of the two key artists in the exhibition Old Masters.
Narritjin was renowned for the fact that he used art as a means of expressing the significance of Aboriginal culture to non- Aboriginal people.
This painting is called 'Coat of Arms'.
If we look at the top section of the picture, we can see two animals: one a kangaroo representing the earth and the other an emu representing the sky.
What Narritjin is doing with this picture is using elements that we see in every day of our lives,
things we are very familiar with, and reconfiguring them to emphasise the importance of Aboriginal culture in Australia
but also that Australia is a mixture of different races, of different cultures and of different societies -
it's a place where these different things come together.
I think people should come and see Old Masters because it will introduce them to an art form
which is one of the oldest continuing traditions of art known to humanity.
It is also, of course, an Australian form of art, school of art if you like,
which is of great significance in the cultural life of this country.
But I suppose more importantly people need to come and see this to learn more about Aboriginal culture,
to enjoy the aesthetic of art in bark painting and also to be inspired by what they see.