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Published by CompNet Systems on

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.

Categories: Shire of East Pilbara (Martumili Artists)

Name: Roxanne Anderson

Language: Manyjilyjarra

Community: Derby

Biography:

“My name is Roxanne Anderson. I was born in Barwidgee Station in the bush at a windmill called Top Mill. It’s 190 kilometres from Wiluna, southeast. My parents worked there at Barwidgee Station. My father was shearing and mustering sheep. My mother, she used to be the house lady, doing all the cleaning.

We stayed at the station with a lot of other families. My auntie used to look after us when my mum was at work. She learned [taught] us about hunting and gathering for bush tucker. We grew up there, we stayed there until we went into town on the Wiluna Mission in the 70’s, ‘till it closed in ’75 or maybe ’76. We got our education in Wiluna Mission, and on the holidays the boss lady from the station and my mum used to pick us up, but we wouldn’t hang around. We’d go back to the bush- learn about hunting and bush foods.

After Wiluna I was living with my auntie in East Perth, and I went to Carlisle Primary school. Then I went to Kalgoorlie Eastern Goldfield’s Senior High, stayed in a boarding place. I knew other people from Wiluna that was going there.

I got four childrens, my oldest is a son and the other three are my daughters. My son and my two youngest daughters all paint. They looked at me and learned. I got four grandchildren, three grandson and one granddaughter, little ones.

I had a lot of paintings in exhibitions. I also done a logo of the Birriliburu [Native Title] Determination on the t-shirts and cups. I even got a Canning Stock Route painting on one of those Headsox. They’re all over Australia, but most of them are sold. I paint about my Country, and the flowers on the Canning [Stock Route] and the colours are what you see when you’re travelling in the springtime when the flowers are out. I also paint about the Seven Sisters [dreaming].

My father was a painter, but he done oil painting, landscape. My sister Vera, she do dot painting, and I do dot painting too, and my sister Desrae [Anderson] and our brothers. I taught myself. I learned how to mix my colours and match. I like painting about Canning [Stock Route], Seven Sisters Jukurrpa (dreaming), and wildflowers. We tell our stories in the paint.”

 - Roxanne Anderson

 

Born on Barwidgee Station at the first well on the Canning Stock Route near Top Mill, Western Australia, Roxanne Anderson is of the Martu people. Coming from a long line of talented artists, she is experimental in her approach, developing her own style. Working in various colour combinations, Roxanne brings to life the traditional stories of the Martu people which is embedded into the depth and detail of her paintings. 

Roxanne's work was exhibited in the 2015 Revealed: New and Emerging WA Aboriginal Artists (Fremantle Arts Centre, WA), and selected by Headsox Australia to feature on their distinctive tube head and neckwear.

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