![Australian Indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) artwork by VARIOUS SPINIFEX ARTISTS (COLLABORATIVE) of Spinifex Artists. The title is Pila Nguru. [18-400] (Acrylic on Linen)](https://media.redotgallery.com/stockroom/gallery/p/pila-nguru-5109-LARGE-2.jpg)
VARIOUS SPINIFEX ARTISTS (COLLABORATIVE)
Pila Nguru18-400 (2018)
Acrylic on Linen
Pila Nguru | 18-400
Acrylic on Linen
200 x 230cm | 78.74 x 90.55in
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Six senior Spinifex men have collaborated to create this painting that gives us a depiction of Pila Nguru - from Spinifex Country. The Men have connection to a swathe of significant sites that inter relate to one another through story, song and cultural authority. There is birthright and paternal links that govern who can depict which sites but the men know the others country and the Tjukurpa associated within it intimately. It is this intimacy, this complete knowledge of one another’s place in Country and Culture that allows the men to join in such a way. Here they give us a glimpse into a way of seeing the world, a depiction of birth and creation from an intrinsically linked posion where the creaon of country is the story and the song.
Roy Underwood takes us through the monumental sand ridges of Miramiratjara as its being guarded by a powerful Wanampi (Water Serpent) who travels through the ground appearing when necessary. Fred Grant depicts the abundance of sites, the interlaced travelling tracks that carried him to this place, to Pirapi from the beginning, wandering through Country with meaning. Ned Grant follows the paths of the wata tree roots) and takes us deep underground within the labyrinth of twists and turns, created by the first beings to surface through the Ngalta (Currajong) that holds the life affirming water for travelling through this arid landscape. Ian Rictor places Kamanti, the site representing the Two Men who made this their home on the journey of Creation. Lennard Walker takes on the journey north to his home of Kulyuru where the Minyma Tjuta created the landscape and Byron Brooks guides us to the east as we watch country associated with his childhood unfold.
This multitude of sites, of country, of fauna and flora was all created as the first beings moved though. Traversing and shaping the landscape all at once, telling the story, the moral narrative and physical reminders of their power and presence that people still live by today.