Malaluba Gumana was an award winning and senior artist of Buku-Larrnggay Mulka of East Arnhem land. A very fine exponent of marwat - the cross hatching technique using a ‘hair brush’- Malaluba mainly paints her mother’s Gålpu clan designs of dhatam (waterlilly), djari (rainbow), djaykung (filesnake) and wititj (olive python). 

This work represents Garrimala, a billabong near the artist’s residence, the Dhalwangu clan homeland at Gångan. It is a sacred site for the artists’ mother’s Gålpu clan. But this imagery really refers to perhaps the oldest continuous human religious iconographical practice- the story of the Rainbow Serpent. Estimates vary from 40,000-60,000 years on the depictions of the Rainbow Serpent in West Arnhem rock shelters.

Wititj is the all powerful rainbow serpent (olive python) that traveled through Gålpu clan lands and on further, during the days of early times, living amongst the Dhatam, or waterlillies, causing ripples and rainbows (Djari) on the surface of the water - referenced in the cross hatching. 

The story of Wititj is of storm and monsoon, in the ancestral past. It has particular reference to the mating of Wititj during the beginning of the wet season when the Djarrwa (square shaped thundercloud) begin forming and the lightning starts striking. The Galpu clan miny’tji (sounds like min-ytji) - the sacred clan design behind the lillies - represents Djari (rainbows) and the power of the lightning within them. It also refers to the power of the storm created by Wititj - the diagonal lines representing trees that have been knocked down as Wititj moves from place to place. The ribs of the snake also form the basis of the sacred design here. The sun shining against the scales of the snake form a prism of light like a rainbow. The arc which a snake in motion depicts is rainbow-shaped, but causes the oily shimmer to refract the colours of the rainbow. The power of the lightning is made manifest when the snakes strike their tongue; the thunder being the sound they make as they move along the ground. 

The morning after a major cyclone there are swathes of stringybark bent over in snake trails through the bush in just the same way a normal scale snake leaves bent over grass traceable by trained trackers. In mortuary ceremony for Gålpu, the slithering line of dancers take on the form of Wititj and coil in the sand searching for their place. As the spirit comes to rest it adopts the metaphor of a python settling its head into the fork in the tree, known as Galmak, the final resting place of Wititj. 

Other references are the bunches of leaves dancers hold in their hands wet and shining in the sun, perhaps like a rainbow. This pattern is the fury of the tempest seen through the relief of the emerging survivor as the storm moves on sucking the cloud with it allowing the sun to shine. The dots within the circle of the water lily represents its seed pod.