October 2023

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Partjanta

“Katjarra’s  [Katjarra Butler] ngurra (home Country, camp). Birthplace. [It is] sandhill country. Rockhole, little bit of rocks. And in the sandhill, there is a jurnu (soakwater). They take that water, come out [of the soakwater]. Partjanta the name of that jurnu. Main one. She [Katjarra Butler] been go jina [foot, walking]. Early days. Walking [to] Kintore, Papunya.”

“I’m painting my grandmother’s country, her way. Katjarra style.”

-Sharon Porter

This site forms part of Sharon’s ngurra (home Country, camp) through her grandmother, Katjarra Butler. Located east of Kiwirrkurra and on Pintupi country.

The Western Desert term ‘ngurra’ is hugely versatile in application. Broadly denoting birthplace and belonging, ngurra can refer to a body of water, a camp site, a large area of Country, or even a modern house. 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. This knowledge is traditionally passed intergenerationally through family connections. Country for Martu is full of memory; not just the memory of their own movement through it, but also of their family. As summarised by Ngalangka Nola Taylor, “painting the ngurra, they do it to remember their connections.”

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. Physical maintenance of one’s ngurra, like cultural maintenance, ensures a site’s wellbeing, and is a responsibility of the people belonging to that area. 

This work depicts a yinta (permanent spring) within the artists’ ngurra (home Country, camp), typically depicted with circular forms. Yinta provided a reliable source of water and were traditionally used as camping sites throughout the year.

During the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) period, 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 through real life experience and the recounting of Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives by name, location, quality and seasonal availability. This encyclopedic knowledge extends even to the nature and movement of arterial waterways, and 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.

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Camping Under Stars

“I painted camping under stars.”

-Oweesha Biljabu

Oweesha started painting with Martumili Artists the age of 7 with the Kuulkaja (school) project. She now paints with her mother and father. 

Martu children attend school in the remote communities of Punmu, Parnngurr, Kunawarritji, Irrungadji and Warralong. The Kuulkaja exhibition recognises the Kuulkaja as being at the heart of each community, and celebrates the important role they play in keeping culture, Country and language strong.

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Partjanta

“Katjarra’s  [Katjarra Butler] ngurra (home Country, camp). Birthplace. [It is] sandhill country. Rockhole, little bit of rocks. And in the sandhill, there is a jurnu (soakwater). They take that water, come out [of the soakwater]. Partjanta the name of that jurnu. Main one. She [Katjarra Butler] been go jina [foot, walking]. Early days. Walking [to] Kintore, Papunya.”

“I’m painting my grandmother’s country, her way. Katjarra style.”

-Sharon Porter

This site forms part of Sharon’s ngurra (home Country, camp) through her grandmother, Katjarra Butler. Located east of Kiwirrkurra and on Pintupi country.

The Western Desert term ‘ngurra’ is hugely versatile in application. Broadly denoting birthplace and belonging, ngurra can refer to a body of water, a camp site, a large area of Country, or even a modern house. 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. This knowledge is traditionally passed intergenerationally through family connections. Country for Martu is full of memory; not just the memory of their own movement through it, but also of their family. As summarised by Ngalangka Nola Taylor, “painting the ngurra, they do it to remember their connections.”

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. Physical maintenance of one’s ngurra, like cultural maintenance, ensures a site’s wellbeing, and is a responsibility of the people belonging to that area. 

This work depicts a yinta (permanent spring) within the artists’ ngurra (home Country, camp), typically depicted with circular forms. Yinta provided a reliable source of water and were traditionally used as camping sites throughout the year.

During the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) period, 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 through real life experience and the recounting of Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives by name, location, quality and seasonal availability. This encyclopedic knowledge extends even to the nature and movement of arterial waterways, and 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.

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Untitled

This work portrays an area known to the artist, painted here from memory. During the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) era 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), and different varieties of warta (trees, vegetation) were carefully observed and remembered. Today, this relationship with Country remains equally strong, despite the movement of Martu out of the desert and into remote Aboriginal communities, towns and cities.

Also visible may be traces of life cycles based around kalyu (rain, water) and waru (fire). 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 visible 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. 

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All the mima (women)

The site depicted in this work, situated to the east of Kiwirrkurra and on Pintupi Country, forms part of Sharon’s ngurra (home Country, camp) through her grandmother, Katjarra Butler. Katjarra shared with Sharon the jukurrpa (dreaming) story for this area. This narrative describes how a distinctive group of rocks located here came to be formed by “all the mima (women) sitting down next to two rocks and one rockhole. They was eating bush tucker, yellow berries, and they was drinking water from one rockhole. They was in one place, and they was eating a big round one, that yellow berry. They was looking round and round for more. They never went, they stayed sitting in one place. They still there, they turned into rocks there.” (Sharon Porter)

The term Jukurrpa is often translated in English as the ‘dreaming’, or ‘dreamtime’. It refers generally to the period in which the world was created by ancestral beings, who assumed both human and nonhuman forms. These beings shaped what had been a formless landscape; creating waters, plants, animals, and people. At the same time they provided cultural protocols for the people they created, as well as rules for interacting with the natural environment. At their journey’s end, the ancestral beings transformed themselves into important waters, hills, rocks, and even constellations.