This is a special site for our people. A ceremonial place that has been passed down to us from elder to elder. It is a place where people ask for bush tucker in their country. For this to work, we rub the white chalk from Jiirda on our hands then scatter it back onto the Jiirda hill and say where we want the plants to grow.
Name: Aileen Sandy
Language: Yindjibarndi
Biography:
Aileen Sandy was born in Roebourne in 1951 and lived there her whole life. Her parents were Sandy Andrews and Lila King and Aileen is the third of their eleven children.
"My parents had moved into town from Mt Florence station in their ancestral Country in the Tablelands, but they still worked at the station seasonally and we would go back there for school holidays sometimes. One of the jobs I remember my dad used to have was as a dogger - tracking and catching dingoes".
Aileen started practising art early in 2007 and rapidly forged a distinctive style of her own. She enjoyed depicting her Country with straight lines, circles and dots and she worked continuously exploring new techniques and extending her visual vocabulary. Always keen to experiment with new styles and colours, Aileen worked with great absorption and no care for time. Sometimes she mixed Pilbara earth into her paint to achieve a textured effect on her canvases. While using traditional dotting as a method, she also tapped into non-traditional styles, creating works that have a mixture of traditional and contemporary influences. While her methods may be hybrid, Aileen's subject matter is deeply attached to her traditional Country. She liked to paint the vibrant colours of her Pilbara homeland - the reds of the earth and the varied colours that stream across the Fortescue rock faces. Her talent and idiosyncratic style quickly became widely recognised. Aileen was also interested in basket weaving. She would dye silk and tear it into strips to make small baskets, and she also wove bags and baskets with natural grasses. Aileen’s artwork has been commissioned, acquired and exhibited in galleries across the country including Art Gallery of Western Australia and Ritz Carlton in Perth. She has exhibited in major exhibitions including Colours of Our Country (2016 – 2020), Cossack Art Awards and Tracks We Share (2022).
Aileen was a respected Elder in her community of Roebourne. In May 2023, Aileen sadly passed away. She is beloved by her family and many children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and her memory lives on in her community and through her paintings.
Mulla Mulla & Bluebells Purple Mulla Mulla grows among the grasses, blending beautifully with the bushes.