My Grandmother’s Country, 2023
$490.00
“They [a group of women] were sitting down, one rockhole there. All the bushtucker around.”
– Sharon Palmer
This story is part of a Jukurrpa story passed onto Sharon by her grandmother, Katjarra Butler. The term Jukurrpa is often translated in English as the ‘dreaming’, or ‘dreamtime’. It refers generally to the period in which the world was created by ancestral beings, who assumed both human and nonhuman forms. These beings shaped what had been a formless landscape; creating waters, plants, animals, and people. At the same time they provided cultural protocols for the people they created, as well as rules for interacting with the natural environment. At their journey’s end, the ancestral beings transformed themselves into important waters, hills, rocks, and even constellations.
This site forms part of Sharon’s ngurra (home Country, camp) through her grandmother, Katjarra Butler. Located east of Kiwirrkurra, on Pintupi country.
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.
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- Tarnanthi Art fair & Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair Foundation takes no responsibility for the negotiation, coordination or distribution of freight and shipping of purchases made at the 2023 online Tarnanthi Art fair. Items customers wish to purchase may require an additional quote from the Art Centre/Vendor for freight which will be charged separately.
- Shipping and freight costs are not included in the advertised purchase price unless this is stipulated at the point of purchase of the item by the Art Centre/Vendor.
- If shipping and freight costs are not stipulated at point of purchase, all shipping and freight costs must be arranged directly with the Art Centre/Vendor from where the purchase was made.
- If multiple items are purchased from different Art Centres/Vendors in the same transaction, customers must arrange shipping with each Art Centre/Vendor.
