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Waterholes

This work depicts waterholes within the artists’ ngurra (home Country, camp), typically represented with circular forms. Waterholes are sites that require maintenance, including digging to increase flow, clearing out surrounding growth, and cleaning up after sullying by camels or cattle.

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.

Categories: Shire of East Pilbara (Martumili Artists)

Name: Derrick Butt

Community: Parnngurr

Biography:

“I ask the brother to my grandmother, and I was asking them where my grandmother born and which Country, so I could paint it. And they told me some stories and I started painting, because my grandmother left his country when he was young and didn’t manage to get back to his Country. So I wanted to paint like part of his history, as his grandson, to tell people where my grandmother’s born, and which Country.

One day I went to Perth on the plane. And I saw the Country – I was on the window side - and I saw the Country, how different it looks when you’re walking on the land to when you’re in a plane looking down, so that gave me an idea, and that’s how I created my art. And I love painting bird’s eye view, like looking down on Country.

Sometimes you can see the land is not always brown and black. I like mixing my colours, brighter colours. That’s how I see the land, looking down on it. And people love my paintings, and how I do art. And I feel blessed that people love my art, and this is my story through my grandmother. She’s not around but I can carry her story, carry his legacy through my art.”

 - Derrick Butt

Derrick was born in Derby in the Western Australian Kimberley, but moved to Purngurr Community in the Pilbara region at a young age to stay with his grandmother’s side of the family. He began sketching in school at Parngurr, soon developing a strong love of art, and then learning to paint. In his late teens he moved to Newman where he started to paint again, and began to showcase his work through Martumili Artists. 

Derrick’s work depicts the site of Kulyakartu in his grandmother’s Country. Kulyakartu is located in the far north of the Martu homelands, near the Percival Lakes region of Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. Kulyakartu is mostly grass Country where there is very good hunting. In particular parnajarrpa (goanna), wild cats, and lunki (witchetty grub) are found in abundance here. 

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