CompNet Systems

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Digging for Water

“This painting is about digging some holes for finding goannas and water, as a young girl, from around ten years old with my family around Kunawarritji. Well 32, my grandfather’s country.”

– Kerry Anne Bennett

“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.

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Untitled

This is Yikartu’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. 

Yikartu’s ngurra encompasses the Country that she and her family walked in the pujiman (traditional, desert-dwelling) era. Yikartu was born at Lalyipuka. She grew up, walked and hunted primarily within Yulparija Country, north of Manyjilyjarra Country, and through to the Percival Lakes area, at the northern boundary of the Martu homelands. She continued to live nomadically before eventually deciding to move to Jigalong Mission along with many other relatives following an extreme and prolonged drought in the 1960s. 

Portrayed in this work are features of Yikartu’s ngurra, such as the dominant permanent red tali (sandhills), warta (trees, vegetation), and the individually named water sources she and her family camped at. These include Yulpu, Yimiri, Kupankurlu, Kurturrara, Wirnpa, Jurnpanja, Rulu-rulu, Taparl-taparl, Wirrkujapayi, Tayiku and Puntita. 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.

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Untitled

“I like painting. It’s a good way to learn from the old people and keep the stories going.”

 – Cyril Whyoulter

Cyril Whyoulter is one of the most dynamic and exciting practitioners to emerge from the youngest generation of Martumili Artists. He, like his contemporaries, began to paint with his parents, grandparents and extended family, thus fostering an organic process of learning not only about painting techniques, but also specific locations, family histories, traditional ways of life, and Jukurrpa (Dreaming). He has been a key driving force behind a number of major collaborative projects that have promoted the transfer of cultural knowledge through visual arts, including exhibitions; Pujiman (Desert dwelling, traditional) and Wantili (Warntili, Canning Stock Route Well 25).

Stylistically Cyril’s work melds traditional, contemporary, and experimental elements, demonstrating the development of his own aesthetic while continuing to reflect the powerful influence of his elders. Cyril first began drawing with his grandfather Larry Patterson, and later began painting with his mother, Betty Whyoulter, and grandmother and renowned Martumili artist, Bugai Whyoulter. Having collaborated with and worked alongside Bugai in particular, her influence is most readily identifiable in his work.

Frequently depicted in Cyril’s paintings are Jukurrpa narratives, Jila Kujarra (Two Snakes) and Wati Kujarra (Two Goanna Men), as well as various sites forming part of his family’s ngurra (home Country, camp). These sites encompass a large tract of land, ranging from the south western edge of the Karlamilyi (Rudall River) region through to Wantili, and north to the area surrounding Kunawarritji (Canning Stock Route Well 33).