In September, when we are looking for gum from the Blue Gum Tree, we walk through the spinifex country. We pick the gum when it is crystal colour, and we eat it, or put it into hot water to make it like a toffee. We call it sugar lolly.
This is the Fortescue Mulla Mulla or ‘Gumbarli’ in Yindjibarndi language. The flower is a purplish colour. It is not a bush medicine, just a flower that grows in the country, in lines along the roads and everywhere. In this painting, the seeds of the Mulla Mulla are all blowing out. Once the leaves and petals have fallen off the seeds are blown all through the land to bring flowers again next year.
The Sturt Pea has a vibrant red flower with a black centre piece. It has a succulent sweet juice that can be eaten.
Whether it’s in the dry season or when the flower’s are blooming, the landscapes gives me joy. In the land where I live I can go and collect bush food or bush medicine. When I look at my country, yellow is when the flower’s start blooming I know it’s time for sugar lollies to come in the Blue Gum tree. Then it becomes full of wattle colours (which is yellow) that’s when I know it is September. During the rain season the colours become green and all the beauty comes out in its own natural way. New growth of all plants spring out and that’s why I love painting about the Pilbara country.
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. When Martu Country burns, mosaic fire scars are left on the Country, and patches of regeneration form a kind of mosaic pattern across the land. This is called nyurnma – burnt Country. 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 Martumili Artists works, where they paint Country from an aerial perspective.
This is Ngarga’s Country- her ‘ngurra’ (home Country, camp). 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.
Ngarga’s ngurra encompasses the Country that she and her family walked in the pujiman (traditional, desert-dwelling) era. She grew up, walked and hunted primarily around the Percival Lakes region as a young girl, travelling with her mother, siblings, and extended family. She lived nomadically before her family was persuaded to move to Jigalong Mission in 1963 by staff from the Native Welfare Department in 1963. Hers was one of the last families to leave the desert.
Portrayed in this work are features of Ngarga’s ngurra, such as the striking salt lakes, dominant permanent red tali (sandhills), warta (trees, vegetation), and the individually named water sources she and her family camped at. These include Wirnpa, Yimiri, Jaramarra, Kurturarra, Karily-karily, Kiriwirri, Kupankurlu, Linyjalangu, Ngurtukurangu, and Milkarra. Rock holes, waterholes, soaks and springs were all extremely important sites for Martu people during the pujiman period, and are generally depicted with circular forms.
The encyclopaedic knowledge of the location, quality and seasonal availability of the hundreds of water bodies found in one’s Country sustained Martu as they travelled across their Country, hunting and gathering, visiting family, and fulfilling ceremonial obligations. They would traverse very large distances annually, visiting specific areas in the dry and wet season depending on the availability of water and the corresponding cycles of plant and animal life on which hunting and gathering bush tucker was reliant. As they travelled and hunted they would also burn areas of Country, generating a greater diversity of plant and animal life
This is Ngarga’s Country- her ‘ngurra’ (home Country, camp). 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.
Ngarga’s ngurra encompasses the Country that she and her family walked in the pujiman (traditional, desert-dwelling) era. She grew up, walked and hunted primarily around the Percival Lakes region as a young girl, travelling with her mother, siblings, and extended family. She lived nomadically before her family was persuaded to move to Jigalong Mission in 1963 by staff from the Native Welfare Department in 1963. Hers was one of the last families to leave the desert.
Portrayed in this work are features of Ngarga’s ngurra, such as the striking salt lakes, dominant permanent red tali (sandhills), warta (trees, vegetation), and the individually named water sources she and her family camped at. These include Wirnpa, Yimiri, Jaramarra, Kurturarra, Karily-karily, Kiriwirri, Kupankurlu, Linyjalangu, Ngurtukurangu, and Milkarra. Rock holes, waterholes, soaks and springs were all extremely important sites for Martu people during the pujiman period, and are generally depicted with circular forms.
The encyclopaedic knowledge of the location, quality and seasonal availability of the hundreds of water bodies found in one’s Country sustained Martu as they travelled across their Country, hunting and gathering, visiting family, and fulfilling ceremonial obligations. They would traverse very large distances annually, visiting specific areas in the dry and wet season depending on the availability of water and the corresponding cycles of plant and animal life on which hunting and gathering bush tucker was reliant. As they travelled and hunted they would also burn areas of Country, generating a greater diversity of plant and animal life
This is Ngarga’s Country- her ‘ngurra’ (home Country, camp). 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.
Ngarga’s ngurra encompasses the Country that she and her family walked in the pujiman (traditional, desert-dwelling) era. She grew up, walked and hunted primarily around the Percival Lakes region as a young girl, travelling with her mother, siblings, and extended family. She lived nomadically before her family was persuaded to move to Jigalong Mission in 1963 by staff from the Native Welfare Department in 1963. Hers was one of the last families to leave the desert.
Portrayed in this work are features of Ngarga’s ngurra, such as the striking salt lakes, dominant permanent red tali (sandhills), warta (trees, vegetation), and the individually named water sources she and her family camped at. These include Wirnpa, Yimiri, Jaramarra, Kurturarra, Karily-karily, Kiriwirri, Kupankurlu, Linyjalangu, Ngurtukurangu, and Milkarra. Rock holes, waterholes, soaks and springs were all extremely important sites for Martu people during the pujiman period, and are generally depicted with circular forms.
The encyclopaedic knowledge of the location, quality and seasonal availability of the hundreds of water bodies found in one’s Country sustained Martu as they travelled across their Country, hunting and gathering, visiting family, and fulfilling ceremonial obligations. They would traverse very large distances annually, visiting specific areas in the dry and wet season depending on the availability of water and the corresponding cycles of plant and animal life on which hunting and gathering bush tucker was reliant. As they travelled and hunted they would also burn areas of Country, generating a greater diversity of plant and animal life
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. When Martu Country burns, mosaic fire scars are left on the Country, and patches of regeneration form a kind of mosaic pattern across the land. This is called nyurnma – burnt Country. 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 Martumili Artists works, where they paint Country from an aerial perspective.
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. When Martu Country burns, mosaic fire scars are left on the Country, and patches of regeneration form a kind of mosaic pattern across the land. This is called nyurnma – burnt Country. 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 Martumili Artists works, where they paint Country from an aerial perspective.
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. When Martu Country burns, mosaic fire scars are left on the Country, and patches of regeneration form a kind of mosaic pattern across the land. This is called nyurnma – burnt Country. 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 Martumili Artists works, where they paint Country from an aerial perspective.