Artiste : Nora Nungabar (1920)

Titre de l'œuvre : Kunawarritji (well 33 of the Canning stock road)

Format : 152 x 106 cm

Provenance et certificat : centre d'art aborigène de Martumili

Référence de cette peinture : 13-215

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Explications pour cette œuvre :

Kunawarritji is an important site in the Great Sandy Desert where multiple stories and histories intersect. In the Jukurrpa (dreamtime) period, the Seven Sisters stopped here and shaped a number of landforms before continuing on their long journey east. During the pujiman (nomadic desert dweller) era, the site was an important yinta (permanent water source),
where families stopped and camped for long periods each year.

At the turn of the 20th century Kunawarritji was converted into a well (Well 33) along the 1850km long Canning Stock Route, created as a means to drove cattle through the harsh Western Australian desert. Each year throughout the 1930-50s, the well became a site of contact between drovers, their cattle, and desert families.

Today, Kunawarritji community is a site of return, a place where Martu people have come back to continue making their life in the desert.

Nungabar grew up in the country that became Wells 33-38 on the Canning Stock Route. From an early age she and her family had encounters with the white men who drove cattle along the route. As a young woman, together with her close friend Nora Wompi, Nungabar followed the drovers north to Balgo Mission, where she settled and raised a family. She eventually
relocated to her homelands at Kunawarritji, where she was considered a custodian of a great deal of cultural knowledge about the Kunawarritji area.

© Photo : Aboriginal Signature Estrangin gallery with the courtesy of the artists and Martumili