September 2021

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Pitu (Separation Well)

“Ngurra me, my ngurra (this is my Country, my home). Mummy mili Pitu and Kulilu (My mother’s home Country is around the permanent springs of Pitu and Kulilu). I been born [at] Pitu. Two mummy, one daddy born there too there. Two yinta (permanent springs) [can be found in the area], one Pitu name. Kirti-kirti (hill kangaroos) everywhere there, good hunting Country. Jila (snake) resting there, dream time. Minyipuru (Jakulyukulyu, Seven Sisters), they travelled through Pitu.”

 –  Jakayu Biljabu

 “Jakayu paints the main yinta that sustained her family during the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) days. Pitu and Kulilu is part of Jakayu’s story, part of her home. It’s who she is. This painting shows Pitungakal ngurra, nyaku Kulilu, Jakayu’s ngurra (Jakayu paints looking towards her home Country, Pitu. From here she will see Kulilu, also her home Country). Jakayu walked around here with her mother and father and her two jarntu (dingoes) as a young girl. [This painting] shows the yinta, wattle shrubs and tuwa (sand hills) all around that place. Kalyukaja (plenty of water) all across that Country. Yinta, Kulilu, kalyukaja (that waterhole, Kulilu, is full of water). Pitu is serpent Country. That jila came across from Wirnpa [soak], travelling south through Pitu, making a big mob of kapi (water). Jila is an important ancestral spirit that mapped out that Country.”

 – Jakayu Biljabu, as translated by Glady’s Bidu (Jakayu’s niece and daughter in law)

Pitu (Separation Well) is an important cultural site and large soak located yulparirra (south) of Wuranu (Canning Stock Route Well 29) and Kulilu rockhole and soak. Pitu is Jakayu’s and her mother’s birthplace, and forms an integral part of her ngurra (home Country, camp). Jakayu grew up in this area; she knew the region intimately and travelled around here extensively with her family in her youth. During this time Jakayu’s family would regularly meet around here with fellow Martumili Artists Bugai Whyoulter and Ngamaru Bidu and their families.

As a site where fresh water was available all year, Pitu was an important camp and a meeting place for Kartujarra and Manyjilyjarra people during the pujiman era. At this time, knowledge of water sources was critical for survival, and today Martu Country is still defined in terms of the location and type of water. Each of the hundreds of claypans, rockholes, waterholes, soaks and springs found in the Martu desert homelands is known by name, location, quality and seasonal availability through real life experience and the recounting of Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives. 

In her account of the area, Jakayu refers to the Jukurrpa events that occurred in and around Pitu. Most significant is the journey of an ancestral rainmaking jila from the Percival Lakes region to Pitu, where it now resides. The Western Desert term jila is used interchangeably to describe springs considered to be ‘living’ waters and snakes, both of which play a central role in Martu culture and Jukurrpa. Of the many permanent springs in Martu Country, very few are ‘living waters’; waters inhabited by jila. Before they became snakes, these beings were men who made rain, formed the land and introduced cultural practices like ceremonies and ritual songs. Some of the men travelled the desert together, visiting one another, but they all ended their journeys at their chosen spring alone, transformed into a snake. Like Pitu, these important springs are named after their jila inhabitant. The Minyipuru also visited this site during their epic travels eastward across Australia. Minyipuru is a central Jukurrpa narrative for Martu, Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people that is associated with the seasonal Pleiades star constellation.

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Untitled

This painting is a collaborative work between Ivy Bidu and her partner Leon Cutter. They often collaborate on their paintings in the Newman Martumili studio. Ivy learnt painting from Ngamarru (Bidu) her older sister and aunty Jakayu (Biljabu) giving her some ideas of painting country. Leon learnt to paint in Wiluna by watching artists and family especially his older sister Gorgina Brown

Leon and Ivy often paint their Country East side of Lake Disappointment and North near Wantili and Parnngurr, Gorgina Bore and well 23. They often paint about bush tucker found in these areas like kirti-kirti (hill kangaroo), various species of goanna including parngarra, bush turkey (kipara) and wuukarta (honey ants). Fruits and vegetables also feature, they included jinjiwirrl (seed), quandong, warmula (bush tomato), kakula (bush cucumber) and minyarra (bush onions).

Their paintings represent the physical elements of Martu Country, with many important jukurrpa (dreamtime stories). Which Ivy and Leon learnt from family when they sit down around the waru (campfire).

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Untitled

This painting is a collaborative work between Ivy Bidu and her partner Leon Cutter. They often collaborate on their paintings in the Newman Martumili studio. Ivy learnt painting from Ngamarru (Bidu) her older sister and aunty Jakayu (Biljabu) giving her some ideas of painting country. Leon learnt to paint in Wiluna by watching artists and family especially his older sister Gorgina Brown

Leon and Ivy often paint their Country East side of Lake Disappointment and North near Wantili and Parnngurr, Gorgina Bore and well 23. They often paint about bush tucker found in these areas like kirti-kirti (hill kangaroo), various species of goanna including parngarra, bush turkey (kipara) and wuukarta (honey ants). Fruits and vegetables also feature, they included jinjiwirrl (seed), quandong, warmula (bush tomato), kakula (bush cucumber) and minyarra (bush onions).

Their paintings represent the physical elements of Martu Country, with many important jukurrpa (dreamtime stories). Which Ivy and Leon learnt from family when they sit down around the waru (campfire).

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Untitled

This painting portrays part of the artist’s country where her and her family lived traditionally during the pujiman (traditional, desert-dwelling) days. During this time, Martu people lived nomadically moving from water source to water source hunting and gathering bush tucker as they went.

Primarily the artist’s family would travel up and down the Canning Stock Route and around the Parnngurr area traversing very large distances, visiting some areas in the dry and some in the wet season depending on the availability of water. 

Martu artists paint Country in all it’s different seasonal stages. Important to Martu, and to Martu Country, is the practice of waru (fire burning); a practice that assists with hunting, regenerates growth, and encourages greater diversity in plant and animal life. Waru is typically burnt in small, controlled areas, leaving a defined patchwork pattern of nyurnma  in the land, across tali (sand hills), linyji (clay pans), parulyukurru (spinifex country) and pila (sandy plains). This patterning is clearly visible in Ngamaru’s  works, where she paints fire from an aerial perspective. After burning, when the rain comes, young, bright green plants start to grow and the cyclic pattern of land management begins anew.

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Untitled

“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.

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Wamurla (bush tomatoes)

Depicted in this work are wamurla (bush tomatoes), a spherical yellow bush fruit harvested from small, prickly shrubs. Wamurla are a favoured bush tucker amongst the Martu, popular for their sweet taste and for the relative ease with which they are foraged. The shrubs prolifically produce purple flowers before fruiting, and require fire burning followed by rains in the months preceding their growth. The fruit is high in vitamin C content, and has a taste likened to banana, passionfruit, and rockmelon. Wamurla can be eaten raw or dried, though only the thick outer rind is eaten; the black seeds and the thin inner part of the fruit are very bitter and inedible. Typically wamurla is collected in large quantities and then eaten or stored for later consumption. 

During the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) 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. Whilst desert life has moved away from mobile hunter-gatherer subsistence throughout the course of the twentieth century, bush tucker continues to be a significant component of the modern Martu diet. Hunting and gathering bush tucker remains equally valuable as an important cultural practice that is passed on intergenerationally. Though hunting and gathering implements have been modernised, methods of harvesting, tracking and the use of fire burning to drive animals from their retreats are still commonly practiced today.

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Red Sandy Desert

“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.