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Garajbebirri Woolmooj-Woolmooj-Ngarri Yarrurn / When we twitch in our bodies

‘When we jump-jump you know la garajbe [twitch in our bodies]. Garajbebirri woolmooj-woolmooj-ngarri yarrurn [When we twitch in our bodies]. Well dambi lingagengarri yimberramenbeyoo jemernngarremboorroo [That is giving us a sign, reminding us about all those people from far away]. That mean we know all the people coming from long way country. That mean stranger [someone who lives far away] is coming.’ Shirley’s painting describes how, in Gija culture, twitches or spasms in certain muscles in the body are signals that someone from far away is about to visit or that something serious has happened to a family member. In this painting, the small circles painted on the body are these specific points where family members are ‘felt’. Shirley says these sensations can signal events that have happened to this relation, such as their dying, falling ill or being in danger. The small grey tree on the right of the body symbolises a relative’s death. It represents traditional Gija burial rites in which a body would be placed on a wooden platform in a tree. The lines emanating from around the groin signify that sensations in this part of the body signal that there is a dangerous person at large that is a threat to them. Shirley explains that each body part is associated with a different kinship relationship. For example, if the muscles at your breast ‘jump’, your children might arrive, they might be in danger or sick or they may have died. This relates both to biological relations and to people who are your classificatory family. According to the Gija kinship system, every person is related to every other through their skin-name. Shirley says she feels her father in her right shoulder and her mother in her right knee and all of those people with the same skin-name as her parents. The vertical lines radiating out from the body near the head represent the skin groups in Gija society. 

Categories: WARMUN ART

Name: SHIRLEY PURDIE Birrmarriya

Language: English, Gija, Kimberley Kriol

Community: Warmun

Biography:

Birrmarriya Shirley Purdie has been painting for more than twenty years and is an artist of great significance and seniority. Her cultural knowledge and artistic skill complement each other to produce a practice that holds great strength. Shirley is also a prominent leader in Warmun community and an incisive cross-cultural communicator.

Inspired by more senior Warmun artists including her late mother, the great Madigan Thomas, as well as Rover Thomas and Queenie McKenzie, Shirley began to paint her country in the early 1990s. Shirley’s uncle, artist Jack Britten, said to her, ‘Why don’t you try yourself for painting, you might be all right.'

Shirley says: 'It’s good to learn from old people. They keep saying when you paint you can remember that country, just like to take a photo, but there’s the Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) and everything. Good to put it in painting, your country, so kids can know and understand. When the old people die, young people can read the stories from the paintings. They can learn from the paintings and maybe they want to start painting too.’ Shirley’s body of work explores sites and narratives associated with the country of her mother and father and is characterized by a bold use of richly textured ochre.

Significant places such as Baloowa, Jirragin and Gilban lie on Country now taken in by Violet Valley and Mabel Downs cattle stations. Much of her work also explores spirituality and the relationship between Gija conceptions of Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) and Catholicism. In 2007 Shirley was awarded the Blake Prize for Religious Art for her major work Stations of the Cross.

Colonial histories of the region also figure in Shirley’s work in which she relates accounts of early contact, massacre, warfare and indentured labour since the incursion of pastoralists into Gija land in the late 1800s.

Shirley is presently working on a major publication of great cultural and ecological value, documenting through painting and in Gija language the plants and trees of her country - Goowoolem Gijam.

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