Elizabeth Dunn, Piltati, 152x122cm

• Aboriginal Artist - Elizabeth Dunn
• Community - Ernabella
• Aboriginal Art Centre - Iwiri Arts 
• Catalogue number - 26-167
• Materials - Professional artist acrylic on heavy-weight canvas
• Size(cm) - H152 W122 D2
• Postage variants - Artwork posted un-stretched and rolled for safe shipping
• Orientation - Painted from all sides and OK to hang as wished

Piltati is Elizabeth’s great-grandfather’s country and her dreaming story. Two brothers were married to two sisters and they all lived together. One day the two men go out hunting, looking for malu (kangaroo). They travel everywhere and find nothing. They start to worry: what are we going to do, there is no meat on this land. One brother says, maybe we should turn into something. They start to think about what they should turn into. Maybe firewood? No, the firewood burns. Maybe emu or a bird? No, people eat them.

They do a lot of talking and decide they should turn into wanampi (rainbow serpents). A lot of smoke starts to come out of the ground, it is very scary and then the men become wanampi. They travel into the land, towards a rockhole.

Meanwhile, the two women are waiting for their husbands to return from their hunting trip. They wait a very long time. They keep going on with their lives, collecting bush tucker, waiting... but the men never come back. So they decide to set out to find their husbands. One day they come across a hole in the ground. They start digging. Digging, digging, digging, they follow the tunnel inside the ground. They are so frantically digging they accidentally hit one of the wanampi in the back. The wanampi chase the ladies and eat one of them and one woman gets away.

Now the wanampi still live in the waterhole called Piltati. The wanampi live there today and provide rain for the bush tucker to grow and provide meat on the land.

Elizabeth was born in Ernabella and went to high school in Adelaide before returning home. She spent her childhood watching her elders paint and she first began painting at Papunya Tjupi Arts in Papunya community. Elizabeth now depicts her grandmother's country on canvas, a place named Piltati near Nyapari. She also portrays stories relating to kampurara (bush tomatoes) on ceramics. As well as working on canvas and in ceramics, Elizabeth is also a talented tjanpi weaver and jewellery maker. Elizabeth is a rising star of the Ernabella Arts studio. Her work has been exhibited overseas in Belgium, Switzerland and the USA.

In 2016 Elizabeth was part of an Ernabella Arts collaborative ceramics installation that was acquired by the National Museum of Australia. In 2018 Elizabeth was shortlisted for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award and was the winner of the Indigenous Award, Port Hacking Potter Group 50th National Pottery Competition.