Bark painting is an Australian Aboriginal art form, involving painting on the interior of a strip of tree bark. This is a continuing form of artistic expression in Arnhem Land and other regions in the Top End of Australia including parts of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Traditionally, bark paintings were produced for instructional and ceremonial purposes and were transient objects. Today, they are keenly sought after by collectors and public arts institutions.
The designs seen on authentic bark paintings are traditional designs that are owned by the artist, or his "skin", or his clan, and cannot be painted by other artists. In many cases these designs would traditionally be used to paint the body for ceremonies or rituals, and also to decorate logs used in burials ceremonies. While the designs themselves are ancient, the medium of painting them on a piece of flattened bark is a relatively modern phenomenon, although there is some evidence that artists would paint designs on the bark walls and roofs of their shelters.
The earliest surviving bark paintings date from the nineteenth century, an example of which is a bark etching of a kangaroo hunt now in the British Museum, which was collected near Boort in northern Victoria by the British explorer John Hunter Kerr. The modern form of bark paintings first appeared in the 1930s, when missionaries at Yirrkala and Milingimbi asked the local Yolngu people to produce bark paintings that could be sold in the cities of New South Wales and Victoria. The motives of the missionaries were to earn money that would help pay for the mission, and also to educate white Australians about Yolngu culture (Morphy 1991). As the trade grew, and the demand for paintings increased, leading artists such as Narritjin Maymuru started being asked to mount exhibitions.