Small Works Collection

The exhibition Small Works Collection presents small scale art & paintings from some of the well-known artists of Central Desert art movement. The stories that they tell are indicative of the cultural ideas that underpin the lives of Aboriginal artists from the Central Desert region.

Mitjili Napurrula paints the trees, watiya, that are traditionally used to source wood for spear making and other artefacts. The unique shape of the trees identifies her art work. The images come from her father’s country Ulwalki, and are part of her father’s dreaming, taught to Mitjili by her mother. Mitjili’s brother, the late Turkey Tolson, painted the Tjukurrpa associated with the assembling of spears.  Mitjili Napurrula paints the dappled white foreground onto a coloured base to describe the symbolic shapes of the trees.

Thomas and Walala Tjapaltjarri are brothers who were part of the last family clan to walk out of the desert in 1984 to join others of their countrymen. Most of their neighbours had left the desert fifteen to twenty years earlier, and now lived in the small settlement at Kiwirrkura. No one was confident that the small group, who had not been heard from since that time, had managed to survive. The group of nine family members were happily received and one brother made the decision to return to the desert life. Thomas and Walala, along with elder brother Warlimpirri, joined the growing desert art movement of the late 1980s. Their work focussed on the Tingari or great Creation sites from their ancestral country. They painted spiritual and metaphysical maps of country, showing the powerful significance of these locations to the traditional owners.

Yinarupa Gibson Nangala also paints her ancestral country at Mukula, south from Jupiter Well in Western Australia. Yinarupa fills her paintings with symbols of the country, stories and natural features that make up the meaning of her lands.

Utopia artists have created a diverse range of styles and images that tell the stories of their Alyawarr and Anmatyerre culture and traditions. Jeannie Mills paints aspects of the Yam story, focusing on the pencil yam, a story that is highly significant within womens’ ceremonies of the region. Hazel and Audrey Morton Kngwarreye paint aspects of country showing the bounty of plant life, that provides the bush foods and medicines that have sustained the people for millennia.

The exhibition will be on display at Japingka Gallery from 10 October to 7 November 2014.