September 2021

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Most often explored in Doreen’s works are the motifs of her everyday modern Aboriginal community life; the animals hunted and plants gathered for bush tucker, the cars and aeroplanes used to travel to the cities and remote communities she regularly moves between, and depictions of the Country itself. 

Collectively this imagery, depicted with Doreen’s trademark wild palettes, painterly brushstrokes, and stark compositions, builds a layered representation of her Country. Doreen’s intimately known ngurra (home Country, camp) is viewed from multiple spatial perspectives, and in stylistic modes ranging from pure abstraction to images incorporating realist and traditional elements.

Doreen’s ngurra encompasses the Country between Western Desert communities and towns; Warralong, Strelley, Marble Bar, Port Hedland, and Jigalong, her birthplace. People identify with their ngurra in terms of specific rights and responsibilities, and the possession of intimate knowledge of the physical and cultural properties of one’s Country. Painting ngurra, and in so doing sharing the Jukurrpa (Dreaming) stories and physical characteristics of that place, has today become an important means of cultural maintenance.

Eagle Flying

Most often explored in Doreen’s works are the motifs of her everyday modern Aboriginal community life; the animals hunted and plants gathered for bush tucker, the cars and aeroplanes used to travel to the cities and remote communities she regularly moves between, and depictions of the Country itself. 

Collectively this imagery, depicted with Doreen’s trademark wild palettes, painterly brushstrokes, and stark compositions, builds a layered representation of her Country. Doreen’s intimately known ngurra (home Country, camp) is viewed from multiple spatial perspectives, and in stylistic modes ranging from pure abstraction to images incorporating realist and traditional elements.

Doreen’s ngurra encompasses the Country between Western Desert communities and towns; Warralong, Strelley, Marble Bar, Port Hedland, and Jigalong, her birthplace. People identify with their ngurra in terms of specific rights and responsibilities, and the possession of intimate knowledge of the physical and cultural properties of one’s Country. Painting ngurra, and in so doing sharing the Jukurrpa (Dreaming) stories and physical characteristics of that place, has today become an important means of cultural maintenance.

Untitled

Most often explored in Doreen’s works are the motifs of her everyday modern Aboriginal community life; the animals hunted and plants gathered for bush tucker, the cars and aeroplanes used to travel to the cities and remote communities she regularly moves between, and depictions of the Country itself. 

Collectively this imagery, depicted with Doreen’s trademark wild palettes, painterly brushstrokes, and stark compositions, builds a layered representation of her Country. Doreen’s intimately known ngurra (home Country, camp) is viewed from multiple spatial perspectives, and in stylistic modes ranging from pure abstraction to images incorporating realist and traditional elements.

Doreen’s ngurra encompasses the Country between Western Desert communities and towns; Warralong, Strelley, Marble Bar, Port Hedland, and Jigalong, her birthplace. People identify with their ngurra in terms of specific rights and responsibilities, and the possession of intimate knowledge of the physical and cultural properties of one’s Country. Painting ngurra, and in so doing sharing the Jukurrpa (Dreaming) stories and physical characteristics of that place, has today become an important means of cultural maintenance.

Tuwa in Puntawarri

“I do tuwa (sandhill) in my own style because that’s our Country. That’s a sandhill, that’s the Dreaming- the Jukurrpa. That’s our culture.

They stay there and we go through the sandhills at Puntawarri in the car. We go first tuwa, then the second tuwa, looking for the waterholes. Go up, up, up- ‘nother tuwa, ‘nother tuwa.

Long time [ago] in Puntawarri, when I was a little girl [with] my Nana and Pop [Dadda Samson and Yanjimi Peter Rowlands] we went climbing up the sandhill. And when I went up my Nana and Pop were at the bottom under a tree and I came down running then rolling, rolling right down to the ground! But I was ok- he right!”

– Judith Anya Samson

Puntawarri is an important cultural area located on the middle stretches of the Canning Stock Route and east of the Jigalong Mission (now Jigalong Aboriginal community), where Anya grew up and continues to live with her grandmother and renowned Martumili Artist, Dadda Samson. Puntawarri is also the site of an abandoned community, a waterhole, creek and lake. Puntawarri’s close proximity to Jigalong Mission made it a popular site for Martu to visit during the ‘mission days’.

While growing up at Jigalong Mission in the 1960’s, Dadda would return to Puntawarri every weekend to hunt and camp. Dadda has been teaching Anya to paint for a number of years, sharing the knowledge and Jukurrpa (Dreaming) stories associated with her ngurra (home Country, camp). 

For many Martu, like Anya and her family, Jigalong Mission was the site where their pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) lifestyle came to an end from the late 1940s as they transitioned to a life as stockmen and women working in cattle stations in the Pilbara region and beyond. In the wake of the extreme and prolonged drought of the 1960s, the last of the remaining pujimanpa (desert dwellers) were forced to move to missions like Jigalong, where a supply of food and water was assured. There, many Martu were reunited with family members that had already moved in from the desert.

The traditional lands of the Martu people encompass the Great Sandy Desert and Rudall River regions of Western Australia, an enormous tract dominated by distinctive red tali, or tuwa (sandhills). These sandhills present an unforgiving landscape; sparse vegetation covers a seemingly never ending expanse of dunes, and yet these lands and the location of resources within them was known intimately by its pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) inhabitants.

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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.