Curatorial insightWestern Arnhem Land is noted for its rocky escarpments laced with caves and also for the distinctive style of its bark painters. Within the rock shelters on cliff faces protected from the weather, Indigenous artists have painted in natural ochres the animals, reptiles, birds and fish of the region. Depicted alongside these representations are Mimi/Mimih ancestral spirits, the match-thin spirits who live in the rocks and only come out at night to hunt, fish, sing, dance and play before retreating back into the rocks at the break of day. Bark paintings have the same range of representations, and often the artists depicted the skeletal structure of their subjects - from which derived the term 'X-ray painting' - as wonderfully portrayed in this work. (Croft, Indigenous Art: Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2001)