Stockroom

This interpretation of country by Dorothy Napangardi in her renowned monochrome palette and style (white dots on a black background), alludes to the shifting landscape that are in constant flux around her country of Mina Mina. The painting draws the viewer’s eyes across country, moving backwards and forwards, taking in the collapsing lines of dots, playing with our visual sense.

Topographically, the sacred site of Mina Mina, a major women’s ceremonial site, is made up of two enormous soakage areas that, rarely filled with water, existing as clay-pans. As water soaks into the ground, small areas of earth dry out and lift at the edges, becoming delineated by salt. In this work Dorothy has captured the essence of this process in the detailing of her dots, depicting the crustations of salt stretching infinitely across country, and etched with the tracks of the women, that cross and merge; telling their stories. It is here across the soakage areas and endless sandhills, that Dorothy and her aunts (Napanangkas) perform rituals of dance and song as part of their passing on of Jukurrpa.

This country is located near Lake Mackay in the Tanami Desert, north of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory. During the Jukurrpa Ancestral women of the Napangardi and Napanangka sub-section groups (aunt / niece relationship, in which knowledge is passed from one to the other) gathered to collect ceremonial digging sticks (karlangu) that had emerged from the ground. They then proceeded east, performing rituals of song and dance, to the place known as Jankinyi. A large belt of Desert Oaks trees (Allocasuarina decaisneana) now stand where these digging sticks once were.