Piet Mondrian saw parallels between his grid-like paintings and the rhythms of modern jazz: to the eminent Aboriginal curator Hetti Perkins, the sequential patterns in the paintings of Midpul (Prince of Wales) possess ‘a musicality imparted by the lively staccato-effect of dots and intermittent bars, as if to be read like the sheet music for an improvised symphony.’1 Midpul, was an elder or daribah, a ceremonial leader, a song man, performer and painter of the Larrakia people who are the original inhabitants of the land on which stands the city of Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory. The Larrakia were the first group in the so-called ‘Top End’ to bear the force of colonization in the mid-nineteenth century, that lead to dispos[1] Hetti Perkins in Tradition Today: Indigenous Art in Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2004, p.166. [2] Midpul is said to have been given his English moniker as the son of King George / Imabul, or as a result of the performance to the Queen. [3] op. cit, p.166.Wally Caruana...