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“When Martu paint, it’s like a map. Martu draw story on the ground and on the canvas, and all the circle and line there are the hunting areas and different waters and tracks where people used to walk, and [some you] can’t cross, like boundaries. So nowadays you see a colourful painting and wonder what it is, but that’s how Martu tell story long ago. It’s not just a lovely painting, it’s a story and a songline and a history and everything that goes with it.” 

– Ngalangka Nola Taylor and Joshua Booth

This work portrays an area of Country that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Firstly, the image may be read as an aerial representation of a particular location known to the artist- either land that they or their family travelled, from the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) era to now. During the pujiman period, Martu would traverse very large distances annually in small family groups, moving seasonally from water source to water source, and hunting and gathering bush tucker as they went. At this time, one’s survival depended on their intimate knowledge of the location of resources; thus physical elements of Country, such as sources of kapi (water), tali (sandhills), different varieties of warta (trees, vegetation), ngarrini (camps), and jina (tracks) are typically recorded with the use of a use of a system of iconographic forms universally shared across the desert. 

An additional layer of meaning in the work relates to more intangible concepts; life cycles based around kalyu (rain, water) and waru (fire) are also often evident. A thousands of year old practice, fire burning continues to be carried out as both an aid for hunting and a means of land management today. As the Martu travelled and hunted they would burn tracts of land, ensuring plant and animal biodiversity and reducing the risk of unmanageable, spontaneous bush fires. The patchwork nature of regrowth is evident in many landscape works, with each of the five distinctive phases of fire burning visually described with respect to the cycle of burning and regrowth.  

Finally, metaphysical information relating to a location may also be recorded; Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives chronicle the creation of physical landmarks, and can be referenced through depictions of ceremonial sites, songlines, and markers left in the land. Very often, however, information relating to Jukurrpa is censored by omission, or alternatively painted over with dotted patterns.

Categories: Martumili Artists

Name: Judith Anya Samson

Language: Putijarra

Community: Jigalong

Biography:

"I was born in Hedland, Port Hedland seaside, but I moved to Jigalong community with my nanna [Dadda Samson] and my pop. Then we moved to desert, to Puntawarri, Well 17. I was still a young girl, still crawling in the desert. It was nice there. Some other families lived there with us. We had some farm, some vegetables. We went schooling in Puntawarri at the school, learning ‘two way’ [refers to teaching in both Martu Wangka and English, with a focus on local cultural and ecological knowledge]. We used to go and get some parnajarrpa (goanna) and turkey. We had a Toyota truck. We been go hunting at the desert. Some people there still, but they gotta build some new houses and then then we going back to [live in] Puntawarri. My nanna’s sister had a house here in Newman, so we used to come and visit. I did high school here in Newman. Now I move between Jigalong and Newman. My nanna is living in Jigalong, so I still go visit here. She’s got a green house. My sister is there looking after her.

I started to do painting here at Martumili when I was a young girl. I been help my nanna painting, we were painting Puntawarri one. My nanna was teach me to paint. I work with Martumili now. I help sell the painting, and photograph and catalogue them. I went to America, Fremantle, the Gold Coast, Sydney,  and Alice Springs with Martumili. I also like playing softball. We play for Jigalong, Western Desert. I work for KJ (Karninyanpa Jukurrpa ranger group) mob in Jigalong too. I like to dance and listen to music."

Anya is the granddaughter of Dadda Samson and Yanjimi (Peter) Rowlands, both senior Martu artists. She was born in Port Hedland and has lived most of her life in Jigalong. Any was raised by her grandparents Dadda and Yanjimi, as her parents passed away when she was very young. Dadda has taught Anya to paint; she has passed stories onto Anya for painting. Anya frequently travels with Dadda to her country around Jigalong, Puntawarri and the Rabbit Proof Fence, the subject of many of her paintings. Anya has exhibited in most Martumili Artists' exhibitions in recent years. Her work has been acquired by the Art Gallery of Queensland (GOMA) and the National Museum of Australia. In 2011, Anya travelled to the United States of America with other Martu artists for the exhibition "Waru" at the Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery, Stanford University."

- Judith Anya Samson

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