KAYILI ARTISTS | YUNPALARA (LAKE BLAIR)

Painted for Kayili Artists, Western Australia in 2005

Sotheby's, Sydney, Aboriginal Art, October 20, 2008, lot 122

Private Collection, Sydney

Power and Beauty:Indigenous Art Now, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Victoria, 2007, illus.

The Kayili Artists collaborative canvas was painted in an around Patjarr Community, a tiny flyspeck on some maps, remote even for the Western Deserts of Australia. When the government gazetted the Gibson Desert Nature Reserve it was unaware the people that formed the Patjarr Community were living at the base of the Clutterbuck Hills, near a significant site with only a store truck running 250 kilometres from Warburton every couple of weeks.

In 1994 Patjarr Community was established with one road leading in out. People lived here by choice and a strong determination, cutting a line from Warburton Mission after being rounded up because of British rocket testing, to be in, or nearer to their country, their sites of significance, the things that define them as people and give them grounding in a world of change. 

The central inspiration for paintings from the Kayili artists at Patjarr is country and the intricate network of stories, “Tjukurrpa”, that feature in the landscape, and the journeys of the “Tingarri” men and women overlying vast areas of country connecting people to the north, south, east, and west. The local chapters in these huge stories occurred in places known intimately and owned thoroughly by the artists, who paint that country as a setting for the story that passes through it and which has left its mark upon it and resources for life in it. Artists often sign and sing while they paint, the art being a visual language to express the songs and travel maps, essential for the navigation and survival of nomadic people.

Yunpalara (Lake Blair) is a large clay pan in the Gibson Desert Nature Reserve is Coiley Campbell’s country. It was the destination for the first of several painting trips from Patjarr during June and July of 2005 and although it was to be a ladies group painting, it was Mr Campbell who applied the first marks to canvas, turning into the centre piece, the concentric circle in the middle, giving the work its structure, which marked the beginning and the place. Yunpalara- created by the Ngintaka (perentie lizard) with a swish of his tail as he ran looking for the Karlaya (emu) who he was led to believe had been teasing him.

The ladies all worked from the edge, painting Nimpara (hair string belt) inwards and it was Ngipi Ward who broke out and stretched her coloured tentacles towards the centre. A form for the work had started, it was rolled up and put on the roof as the vehicles headed back to Patjarr a days rough drive back.

The work started to take more shape on the second week long camp at Mina Mina, about 15 km from Patjarr. Mina Mina is a small flood plain (for want of a better description). Surrounded by sandhills the creek empties and finishes here after rain flows from the low lying Clutterbuck Hills. It is a place of white barked eucalyptus, flat ground with an old hand dug well- which had probably been there for thousands of years. Mostly dry and dusty, sometimes full of water and bright green. 

Most of the Community was dropped here and after a week of hunting (and some painting), black clouds rolled in and it was a dark horizon. Camp was packed up quickly, everything was thrown in the back of the troopie and the trailer, and any car that was there, the painting was thrown on top, wet with paint and tied to the trailer. The heavens opened and life giving rains poured from the sky and filled the creek and then Mina Mina with water.The rain settled in for three days. The canvas was unrolled in the old tin house used as an Art Centre. Two light globes where installed, blankets where brought in, the heater was taken from the office, the doors and windows where closed, ladies came and went from the building.

Eventually, the unseasonal rain passed and the winter desert sky was crystal clear. From the closed doors of the art centre emerged a nearly finished painting. A sheltered place in the sun next to an empty shed was found, the painting was laid out and all hands were continuing the momentum to finish. Mothers and daughters, number one and two wives, old friends enjoying the winter sun and each other’s company finishing up this extraordinary painting.

Kayili Artists was always going to burn brightly and quickly. The Community of Patjarr was home to the older bush, hunting mob who needed to be in their country to sustain their lives. They had a foot in both worlds, new and ancient, seen and unseen If there is another dimension, lost in modern life then the old desert people where close to it or knew all about it, consistently passing through it and travelling to other realms and talking to ancients long past

Over a period of three months and several trips to different country, the work was completed in 2005.

Michael Stitford (Art Coordinator at Kayili Artists 2004 - 2008)