The Men are Singing the Song. (6 individual panels)

Six senior Spinifex artists move as one within a different sized and primed linen, shaping their own Country into the available area whilst aware of others doing the same nearby. The result is a majestic collaborative effort that sits together as a testament to the individual magic created. Each has depicted a portion of a much larger story, of a sweeping country with a multitude of sites that inter-connect within the Song, a landscape that echoes with characters and moral framework which live on in the daily lives of people today.

Roy Underwood moves his magic onto the canvas using the brush like a magicians’ wand, marking the Country that will become the Story, bringing the Creation into the present. Roy and his ambidextrous deft hands allow Miramiratjara to surface, painting the Two Men Creation Journey as he paints the landscape, willing the beings to appear. Miramiratjara, is an especially significant site in the heart of traditional Spinifex Country that has huge bald sand hills protruding skyward and these can be seen from a great distance away like a swell breaking in the distance. It is one of the few sites in the Great Victoria Desert that has permanent fresh water and as such was traditionally peopled on a regular basis often with associated ceremony. Miramiratjara holds the Wati Kutjara Tjukurpa or Two Men Creation Line, a powerful tragedy of greed and revenge that forms part of the moral compass that guides people on a daily basis. It is this continual presence of the Tjukurpa that transcends the daily life of Spinifex People and allows them to hold a sustaining existence with each other and the Country that surrounds.

Simon Hogan walks within the Story, allowing the significant site of Lingka to manifest upon the canvas, moving the Wanari (Mulga) tree to within reach of the precious waters that lay within. These trees signify the physical landscape that surround the Song and a symbol of the need for water by all things. Simon transcends the daily physical realm when painting the significant sites that still inhabit him and allow him to move through the landscape of the canvas.

Ned Grant takes the canvas underground through ‘Anpiri’ the taproot at the base of the Ngalta (Desert Kurrajong) always turning, twisting the markings as he follows the paths to life affirming water sites. Ned weaves the story to Palpatatjara, his place of birth and that of the Nyii Nyii Tjukurpa (Zebra Finch Creation Line) a powerful Mens story that is highly secretive. These are the paths that the first beings travelled shaping the landscape as they went, bringing the physical into the daily reality for the Spinifex People allowing them the Story to follow.

Ian Rictor sweeps the convex rock holes of his linage onto the canvas, filling the space with the landscape he knows intimately. Kamanti, Tuwan and Tjilutjipi come into being. He expands the area with traveling lines, Songlines, routes from where the significant sites were created and where the first beings still reside. These sites still wait for him, sitting quietly, whispering the Song that he walked long before today.

Lawrence Pennington touches the deepest qualities of the Tjukurpa in the unseen, the concealed, taking the broad brush to minimal resemblance of the characters that inhabited the first journey. He guides them effortlessly onto the canvas, channeling the essence of the significant sites from a time before when Lawrence walked the landscape within the Song. Here he brings forth Wati Kutjara or the Two Men, a father and son who traverse the Spinifex Country creating the landscape as they move through it and leaving the physical reminders of their power and presence.

Byron Brooks places large tracts of his country upon the canvas with marked ease, singing the song through the brush, surrounding the sites with multiple travel lines. Byron remembers the well-worn paths that he paints with the Minyma Tjuta Tjukurpa beginning for him at Pirapi and following as the story unfolds over multiple sites. He recreates the journey and the maps that live in the landscape as people traversed it.