TJUKURRPA MAWIYARRANYTJA RUULANGKA
Sending Messages on Paper
4-29 May, 2005  @  MANDURAH ART GALLERY

Christine West*, Clem Rictor, Corley Campbell, Doreen McArthur, Elizabeth Holland*, Fred Ward*, Jacky Giles, Lalla West*, L. Jennings+, Matjiwa Jones, Ngipi Ward, Nola Campbell, Nyakul Dawson, Patju Presley, P. Davies, Taparti Bates, Tommy Watson
(*In attendance  +Deceased)

The Ngaanyatjarra people send greetings to the people of Mandurah. This is our exhibition: Tjukurrpa Mawiyarranytja Ruulangka: Sending Messages on Paper. We are sending 9 paintings from our Warburton Arts Collection, 1 big glass piece in 5 panels and 16 prints.

There are a lot more paintings, more glass and a lot more prints. We have been building up our collection for 15 years. People tell us that this is the biggest collection of art that Aboriginal people have anywhere. We are the bosses for that collection, it belongs to us. We’ve got other things too – like video of singing and dancing, and tapes from that singing as well. We can’t sell these paintings. These are like our own record. But the prints are alright, people can buy them.

People are always asking us ‘What does this painting mean?’ There are too many meanings in these paintings. You can only learn them little bit by little bit. You can’t get the full story straight away. There are different-different stories (tjukurrpa kutjupa-kutjupa), from men’s side and from women’s side, some from our own country and some from outside.

Our country and us, we are all one. We have to look after it. People look after different different places. Some of the paintings are about the time the women went to the Summer Olympics in Sydney. That was in 2000. The ladies danced at the opening. That big face on the paintings is from those Kimberley people. It’s not our story.

In our world the person who paints the painting, and the painting, they’re like all one body. If you wrap yourself in your painting it’s like you are wrapping yourself in your own skin. That’s why it is hard to sell the paintings – when they’re important paintings - because it’s like selling your own body. You don’t know where you’ll end up. You have to keep track of important things. That’s why we decided to make prints – from the paintings. That way we could share our paintings outside. Like sending a message.

We are happy to make money from our work but it has to be the right way. We have spent a lot of time thinking about the rules for letting our images travel. We think the prints is a good way – so everyone can share.

Mrs Holland is one of our senior lady artists. She says:  “We want to keep the collection all together, not split up, you know. These prints, they’re like footprints, this is like our way of having our messages reach out to a bigger mob, like a big two-way, to people in places a long long way from our home. It makes us happy to see our works on paper. They look fresh and lively, like they are newborn. It make us think in a different way. We made a special stamp saying ‘Ngaanyatjarra Cultural Significance’ and we can put our signatures on them. Everybody can write their name – to show who the really artist is. You see, these works were made by us. Not by anybody else, just us.”

We wish you to enjoy our show.
 

Country & People
Our country is a big country. It runs from the Northern Territory border and the South Australian border, and covers those two big deserts, the Great Victoria Desert and the Gibson Desert. There is now the Outback Highway running right through our country. It goes from Laverton right across to Queensland. You can get a permit to drive through the Ngaanyatjarra Lands.
There are about 2000 people living on the Lands. We keep our culture and our language. Ngaanyatjarra is the biggest language – but some people talk Pintubi, Pitjantjatjara or Ngaatjatjarra. We are like close relations to each other.