When the Museum of Contemporary Art was founded in 1989, two of the first works it accessioned to its collection were by a young artist from remote Arnhem Land: John Mawurndjul.

Nawarramulmul (Shooting star spirit), 1988. ( Supplied: MCA/Jessica Maurer )

On one giant bark (more than two metres high and almost a metre wide), rendered in delicate cross-hatched brushstrokes of ochre, were two intertwined Ngalyod (rainbow serpents) from a sacred site called Dilebang on the lands of his ancestors, the Kuninjku people.

The other bark featured a fearsome looking creature, all limbs and claws and teeth: Nawarramulmul, a dangerous "shooting star" spirit from Kuninjku country.

Both paintings had recently returned from Paris at the time they entered the MCA collection, where they had shown as part of the watershed 1988 exhibition of international indigenous art Magiciens de la Terre (Magicians of the Earth) at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

That same year, Mawurndjul's work showed in New York and Chicago as part of the exhibition Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia.

At home, his painting of Ngalyod won the Telstra Indigenous Art Award.

It would have been a heady time for an artist not yet 38.

Over the next few years his work featured in major exhibitions in Japan, Germany, London and Denmark.

Lisa Slade, co-acting director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, says:

"There has been plenty of international attention for John Mawurndjul, but insufficient national attention."

In a wall note, Mawurndjul explains: "In the Lorrkon ceremony early in the morning, at dawn, that's when we put the [deceased person's] bones into the hollow log". ( Supplied: MCA/Jessica Maurer )

John Mawurndjul: I Am The Old And The New, opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art today (before travelling to the Art Gallery of South Australia, and a regional tour), features these two early bark works by the artist, now 66 years old and still living on country.

Co-curated by Clothilde Bullen and Natasha Bullock from the MCA and Nici Cumpston and Dr Slade from AGSA, the exhibition features 160 works, most of them on bark and all of them featuring the particular style of rarrk (or cross-hatching) that is Mawurndjul's trademark.

Fans often speak of Mawurndjul's deployment of rarrk as "shimmering". He took the technique from ceremonial designs particular to his ancestors, but he made it his own. In his catalogue essay, anthropologist and academic (and longtime friend) Jon Altman describes Mawurndjul's art as "mesmerising, shimmering abstraction".

Ngalyod, 2012 ( Supplied: MCA/Jessica Maurer )

"His rarrks don't sit still, they radiate energy," marvels Bullock.

"If you put up lots of other rarrk painters, you would pick a John Mawurndjul work — it would jump out at you."

In fact, he tests them to make sure.

Curator Cumpston says: "One of the things John does to figure out whether or not the work of art is giving that shimmering [energy] is that he'll take the painting and physically walk it into the bush, turn around, walk away — then look back, to see if it's giving the energy it needs to give."

Mawurndjul has innovated across his career, which began in the late 1970s under the guidance of his uncle Peter Marralwanga.

The bark paintings in western Arnhem Land at that time (led by senior artist Yirawala) featured figures of spirits and animals, their bodies filled in with rarrk — and usually on small barks.

By 1988, when he painted his Ngalyod, Mawurndjul had already turned to large bark canvases, and was plotting a shift away from figurative work and towards depictions of the Mardayin (ceremonies) and Djang (or sacred sites) of his people and country, using his particular rarrk style.

"He led an entire art movement in western Arnhem Land," says Bullock.

Mawurndjul paints spirits from the lands of his ancestors, the Kuninjku people. ( Supplied: MCA/Jessica Maurer )

The 160-odd works (all chosen by Mawurndjul for inclusion in the exhibition) have been extracted from 63 private and public collections in Australia and abroad, a labour-intensive feat that makes this exhibition a particularly rare chance to experience this major artist's body of work.

The exhibition's structure (again, dictated by Mawurndjul) arranges the works in clusters by kunred (his places of special cultural significance), with a separate section for spirits and animals. (Visitors can orient themselves geographically via a map of the artist's ancestral country in the exhibition's Learning and Resources room).

Regional tour: Murray Art Museum Albury (NSW): March 14 - June 9, 2019

Glasshouse Port Macquarie (NSW): July 26 - September 22, 2019

Drill Hall Gallery, ANU (ACT): October 4 - November 24, 2019

Blue Mountains Cultural Centre (NSW): December 7 - January 19, 2020

Cairns Regional Gallery (QLD): February 7 - March 29, 2020

Charles Darwin University Art Gallery (NT): April 17 - June 28, 2020

Tweed Regional Gallery (NSW): July 10 - September 20, 2020

Bunjil Place Gallery (VIC): October 2 - November 29, 2020

The wall notes for each section and for specific works are written by the artist (or rather, spoken in language and then translated to English by his friend and collaborator Dr Murray Garde).

In these notes Mawurndjul shares personal history and anecdotes (eating handfuls of pounded palm tree fruits), and tells of burrowing frogs, cheeky yams, mimih spirits and the lorrkon (hollow log) burial ceremony.

In one note he describes gathering materials:

"I get my own white ochre by digging it out of the ground. The white clay nodules are the shit of the Rainbow Serpent, which she has left there, and it just stays in the ground. That white ochre will not disappear, it will always remain there."

It's the first time the MCA has presented an entirely bilingual exhibition, and a testament to Mawurndjul's abiding personal mission to communicate his country, cosmology and culture with the rest of the world.

John Mawurndjul: I Am The Old And The New shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney) until September 23 and at the Art Gallery of South Australia from October 26 to January 28, 2019.

A smaller version of the exhibition will then tour regionally to eight locations across Australia, until 2020.

