Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency: Fitzroy Crossing, Kimberley, WA
Pompey Siddon, a Walmajarri man and one of Mangkaja's founding painters, put it plainly in the months before he died in 1994: "In Fitzroy Crossing we're sitting down now in this little murnturu (island). This is Bunuba country. They are the bosses for this country, for this land. We came in from Cherrabun Station. Before that I was in the bush. I like making these paintings because this is my country, this is my own country." That tension between the country you carry inside you and the country you sit on runs through the art made at Mangkaja. The centre began in the early 1980s as an artefacts workshop in a modest concrete and tin structure funded by the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council. It was founding member Kumanjayi Skipper who gave it the name Mangkaja — a Walmajarri word for the wet weather shelters built in the Great Sandy Desert during the wet season. The echidna in the Mangkaja logo was Skipper's totem. The first exhibition travelled to Tandanya in Adelaide in 1991; the centre incorporated in 1993.
Mangkaja represents five language groups: Bunuba, Gooniyandi, and Nyikina of the martuwarra (river country) along the Fitzroy River, and Walmajarri and Wangkajunga from the jilji (sand hill country) of the Great Sandy Desert. In 1996 and 1997, senior artists from these desert groups painted two enormous Ngurrara Canvases as legal evidence for a native title claim over approximately 800,000 hectares of Crown Land in the Great Sandy Desert — the same approach Spinifex Artists used in Western Australia's Great Victoria Desert. The canvases mapped every living waterhole across the claim area. The centre supports more than 200 artists and operates from its gallery, studio, and specialty store in the centre of Fitzroy Crossing.
Mangkaja Arts at a glance
- Location: 8 Bell Road, Fitzroy Crossing WA 6765. Kimberley region.
- Established: Early 1980s as artefacts workshop. First exhibition 1991. Incorporated 1993.
- People: Bunuba, Gooniyandi, Nyikina (river country) and Walmajarri, Wangkajunga (Great Sandy Desert).
- Artists: 200+ artists and their families.
- Art forms: Paintings on canvas, board and paper; prints; carved artefacts; jewellery; textiles.
- Notable artists: Daisy Andrews, Daisy Japulija, Jewess James, John Prince Siddon, Mervyn Street, Sonia Kurarra, Paji Honeychild.
- Hours: Monday to Friday 11am–4pm.
