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Tjaruwa Woods was born in the Great Victoria Desert at a rockhole called Ilkawitja in 1954. Growing up in the northern portion of the Spinifex area, Tjaruwa travelled mostly within this area with her small family group. When most of the Spinifex People temporarily left their homelands in the 1950s and 60s during a time of British nuclear testing as well as a severe drought, Tjaruwa and her family stayed in their homelands continuing a traditional Western Desert lifestyle until the late 1980s.
It was not until 1986 that Tjaruwa Woods first met white people and was introduced to community style living. Tjaruwa remains a highly skilled Western Desert woman who is able to discuss in detail areas of country which relate to her birthplace and her parent’s birthplaces.
Today, Tjaruwa lives mainly at Tjuntjuntjara Community in the Great Victoria Desert with her husband Byron Brookes, also a renowned artist with the Spinifex Arts Project, and her extended family.
Tjaruwa Woods has exhibited in Australia and internationally both with the Spinifex Arts Project and individually. She featured in the exhibition Contemporary Indigenous Art Now at Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art, Santa Fe New Mexico USA in 2010 and the exhibition Networks: Cells and Silos on display at the Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne. She is represented in numerous private and public collections in Australia, and as part of the Spinifex Arts Project Women’s Collaborative was a finalist in the 2009 Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards.
Tjaruwa Woods was born in the Great Victoria Desert at a rockhole called Ilkawitja in 1954. Growing up in the northern portion of the Spinifex area, Tjaruwa travelled mostly within this area with her small family group. When most of the Spinifex People temporarily left their homelands in the 1950s and 60s during a time of British nuclear testing as well as a severe drought, Tjaruwa and her family stayed in their homelands continuing a traditional Western Desert lifestyle until the late 1980s.
It was not until 1986 that Tjaruwa Woods first met white people and was introduced to community style living. Tjaruwa remains a highly skilled Western Desert woman who is able to discuss in detail areas of country which relate to her birthplace and her parent’s birthplaces.
Today, Tjaruwa lives mainly at Tjuntjuntjara Community in the Great Victoria Desert with her husband Byron Brookes, also a renowned artist with the Spinifex Arts Project, and her extended family.
Tjaruwa Woods has exhibited in Australia and internationally both with the Spinifex Arts Project and individually. She featured in the exhibition Contemporary Indigenous Art Now at Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art, Santa Fe New Mexico USA in 2010 and the exhibition Networks: Cells and Silos on display at the Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne. She is represented in numerous private and public collections in Australia, and as part of the Spinifex Arts Project Women’s Collaborative was a finalist in the 2009 Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards.