WORKS BY LEADING ABORIGINAL, TORRES STRAIT ISLANDERS AND WESTERN AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS

ed./45The title of this print describes a healthy coconut that is full of milk and flesh.According to Dennis Nonan there is a custom that was practiced in the Torres Strait Islands that guaranteed coconuts would mature on the tree to produce this prized fruit. The tree produces prong like stems from which the coconuts grow. Before the fruit starts to form a personwould scale the tree and thrust turtle eggs onto these prongs thereby guaranteeing that they would develop to yield abundant milk and good eating flesh. This is no longer practiced but the artist does recall in the early 80s helping his father undertake this ritual on the family’s coconut grove on Badu Island.There are two main species of coconuts on the island, Kewes, which stands not much higher than a person and Kutatul Urabal that grows up to fifteen metres high.The print by Dennis Nona depicts the turtle eggs on the prongs prior to the formation of the coconut fruit.