111581934985
Untitled
This work portrays an area known intimately to the artist, painted here in exquisite detail 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.
111581934981
Ngayurnangalkumili Ngurra (cannibal country)
“Ngayurnangalku (cannibal beings) fighting. They all come in here, all meet up here. Ngayurnangalku coming from this way [north], go in here. Ngayurnangalku coming from this way (east), they go in. They come from this way (west), get in there. And from the south, get in there again. Fighting all the way. All the yirrkili (boomerang) flying everywhere. All get up.”
This painting depicts several sequences in the jukurrpa (dreaming) of Kumpupirntily (Lake Disappointment) country and the lives of it’s inhabitants, the cannibal beings Ngayurnangalku. The lake is the white section in the centre of the painting, which is further quartered by the creeks that feed into it. Including Kupayiyura (Savory Creek). In these sections, other elements of the jukurrpa intersect with the fighting scenes. Top right includes the partarta (bush turkey) and walawurru (eagle hawk) jukurrpa North of the lake country. Bottom right includes a reference to Turnturnpa, an old woman who is not permitted into the lake area. This section and the others are interspersed by the imagery of the Ngayurnangalku fighting among themselves, indicated by their weapons flying around everywhere.
111582397194
Ngurra (home Country, camp)
“Ngurra (home Country, camp) is a very special Country- where we grew up. We go mostly out on Country and camp out. We go swimming and looking for honey on the trees. We would hunt turkey, emu, kangaroo, look for bardi (witchetty grub), honey ants, yellow berries. It’s an outstation. We call it home. We grew up there. Good memories of that place.”
– Roxanne Newberry
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.
111582396161
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.
111582396392
Untitled
Martumili Artists work with over three hundred artists from remote Martu Aboriginal communities, including Punmu, Parnngurr, Kunawarritji, Jigalong, Irrungadji (Nullagine), and Warralong, as well as from the Parnpajinya (Newman) gallery and studio spaces. Known for their diverse, energetic, and unmediated painting styles, their works reflect the dramatic geography and scale of their homelands. Each artist, however, brings a unique approach to their craft.
Younger Martu artists often start painting alongside their parents, grandparents, and extended family, which fosters an organic learning process. This not only involves mastering painting techniques but also understanding specific locations, family histories, traditional ways of life, bush tucker, and Jukurrpa (Dreaming). Over time, with encouragement from their peers, they develop their own distinct styles and explore unique painting techniques and subject matter. In this work the artist brings a contemporary, evolving perspective to their work.
111582397187
Tuwa (sandhills) in Puntawarri
“I do tuwa (sandhill) in my own style because that’s our Country. That’s a sandhill, that’s the Dreaming- the Jukurrpa. That’s our culture.
They stay there and we go through the sandhills at Puntawarri in the car. We go first tuwa, then the second tuwa, looking for the waterholes. Go up, up, up- ‘nother tuwa, ‘nother tuwa.
Long time [ago] in Puntawarri, when I was a little girl [with] my Nana and Pop [Dadda Samson (dec.) and Yanjimi Peter Rowlands (dec.)] we went climbing up the sandhill. And when I went up my Nana and Pop were at the bottom under a tree and I came down running then rolling, rolling right down to the ground! But I was ok- he right!”
– Judith Anya Samson
Puntawarri is an important cultural area located on the middle stretches of the Canning Stock Route and east of the Jigalong Mission (now Jigalong Aboriginal community), where Anya grew up with her grandmother and renowned Martumili Artist, Dadda Samson (dec.). Puntawarri is also the site of an abandoned community, a waterhole, creek and lake. Puntawarri’s close proximity to Jigalong Mission made it a popular site for Martu to visit during the ‘mission days’. While growing up at Jigalong Mission in the 1960’s, Dadda would return to Puntawarri every weekend to hunt and camp.
For many Martu, like Anya’s family, Jigalong Mission was the site where their pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) lifestyle came to an end from the late 1940s as they transitioned to a life as stockmen and women working in cattle stations in the Pilbara region and beyond. In the wake of the extreme and prolonged drought of the 1960s, the last of the remaining pujimanpa (desert dwellers) were forced to move to missions like Jigalong, where a supply of food and water was assured. There, many Martu were reunited with family members that had already moved in from the desert.
The traditional lands of the Martu people encompass the Great Sandy Desert and Rudall River regions of Western Australia, an enormous tract dominated by distinctive red tali, or tuwa (sandhills). These sandhills present an unforgiving landscape; sparse vegetation covers a seemingly never ending expanse of dunes, and yet these lands and the location of resources within them was known intimately by its pujiman inhabitants.
111582401830
Jamparri
Jamparri is a yinta (permanent spring) located yapurra (west) of Karlamilyi River (Rudall River) and ngaparti (south) of Yaralalu waterhole. Both areas are known as good hunting sites. The Karlamilyi River and its surrounds were created by the Jila Kujarra (Two Snakes) as they journeyed north east to Nyayartakujarra (Ngayarta Kujarra, Lake Dora).
Jila Kujarra is one of the key Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives for the Martu. Though the story belongs to Warnman people, it is shared across the Western Desert with several other language groups. The narrative centres on the travels of two snakes as they are pursued by the Niminjarra, spiritual ancestors of the Warnman people.
111582401822
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.
111582401827
Wirnpa
Wirnpa is an extremely significant cultural site and a soak surrounded by a cluster of salt springs and located within a salt lake at the northern end of the Percival Lakes region. Wirnpa lies in Yulparija Country, in a region dominated by dramatic salt lakes and corrugations of permanent red tali (sandhills).
The soak at Wirnpa is named after one of the most powerful of the ancestral jila (snake) men and the last to travel the desert during the Jukurrpa (Dreaming). The Western Desert term jila is used interchangeably to describe springs considered to be ‘living’ waters and snakes, both of which play a central role in Martu culture and Jukurrpa. Wirnpa is a rainmaking jila who lived and hunted in the Percival Lakes area. His travels are described in the songs and stories of many language groups across the Western Desert, even those far removed from his home site. In his epic travels, Wirnpa met and feasted with many other ancestral beings, exchanged ceremonial objects, and created a series of different laws and ceremonies. When he finally returned home, he searched for his many children only to discover that they had already died. They had laid down and become the salt springs of the Percival Lakes. Wirnpa wept for his children before himself transforming into a snake and entering the soak where he still resides.
Jila sites like Wirnpa must be entered respectfully; particular rituals are practiced, such as lighting fires, sweeping the ground with branches, approaching in single file, and calling out to the site’s jila to announce one’s arrival and introduce people who are new to the jila. Those who do not follow these guidelines are in danger of becoming sick, or even being killed.