Nancy Ngarnjapayi Chapman / Manyjilyjarra people / Australia b.1942 / May Maywokka Chapman / Australia b.c.1940s / Mulyatingki Marney / Australia b.c.1941 / Marjorie Malatu Yates / Australia b.c.1950 / Manyjilyjarra people / Mukurtu 2010 / Synthetic polymer paint on linen / 127 x 300cm / Purchased 2010 with funds from Professor John Hay AC and Mrs Barbara Hay through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art  / © The artists

Nancy Nyanjilpayi CHAPMAN; May Maywokka CHAPMAN; Mulyatingki MARNEY; Marjorie Malatu YATES
Mukurtu 2008

On Display: QAG, Gallery 2

Mukurtu 2010 is a collaborative work by Pilbara artist Nancy Ngarnjapayi Chapman and her three sisters. The work is an expression of the profound respect the sisters have for Ngayarta Kujarra (Lake Dora) in the East Pilbara, Western Australia, and the waters that have sustained their families for generations.

Mukurtu is important because it contains information about the location of water in the desert. In the centre, a brilliant blue shape depicts a life-giving freshwater spring, fringed with green water plants. Beyond the lake’s edge, plants appear as a scattering of colourful pockets of pink, orange and purple. The dotted paint is applied thickly, layered in places, to reflect the textured surface of the dry salt pan, and the restricted palate reflects its pearl-like lustre.

The act of painting Mukurtu was a shared experience for the sisters — as they worked, they re-told stories from their common history and explained the relationships that connect them with each other and with their country. They also explored the use of colour, developed techniques and shared skills.

For the three older women, it was a way of teaching their younger sister, Malatu, about the country she was permitted to paint and how it should be painted. The work is also intended to teach young people of the Ngayarta Kujarra area about their physical and spiritual connections to country.

Nancy Nyanjilpayi Chapman, May Maywokka Chapman, Mulyatingki Marney and Marjorie Malatu Yates are sisters who live at Punmu on the north-eastern shore of Ngayarta Kujarra (Lake Dora).

Ngayarta Kujarra is part of an extensive network of waterways and bodies of water that run through the Western Australian deserts, along a route now known as the Canning Stock Route.

An important cultural site, the lake is central to the women’s lives, their art, their songs and their dances, which are given new life in paintings such as Mukurtu.

 

Discussion Questions

1. This artwork is the result of collaboration between several painters. What do you think might have been some advantages of these artists working together, as a team, to complete this painting?

2. Describe the feelings communicated in Mukurtu 2010 that these sisters have for their country.

3. Mukurtu is a visual response to a very specific place that uses a customary way of thinking about and representing the landscape. Discuss how this way of representing the landscape differs from a historical European approach.

Classroom Activities

1. Take a photo of your favourite place at your school. Find other classmates that have selected the same place. In your group, plan, design and finally paint your chosen place to experience working collaboratively.

2. Working in groups of three, create a representation of a significant, local feature from an overhead perspective. This could be a geographic or constructed feature. Each person should begin by using watercolour on a damp sheet of paper to block out the initial shapes. After allowing this layer to dry, rotate the images around the group, so that a second person can add some further detail, again using watercolour. The images should be rotated one last time, with final details added in black ink or graphite.