Debra Thomas, Untitled, 61x46cm

• Aboriginal Artists - Debra Thomas
• Community - Punmu
• Aboriginal Art Centre - Martumili Artists
• Catalogue number - 20-802
• Materials - Acrylic paint on canvas
• Size(cm) - H61 W46 D2
• Postage variants - Artwork posted un-stretched and rolled for safe shipping
• Orientation - Painted from all sides and OK to hang as wished

“When Martu paint, it’s like a map. Martu draw story on the ground and on the canvas, and all the circle and line there are the hunting areas and different waters and tracks where people used to walk, and [some you] can’t cross, like boundaries. So nowadays you see a colourful painting and wonder what it is, but that’s how Martu tell story long ago. It’s not just a lovely painting, it’s a story and a songline and a history and everything that goes with it."
— Ngalangka Nola Taylor and Joshua Booth

This work portrays an area of Country that can be interpreted in multiple ways. Firstly, the image may be read as an aerial representation of a particular location known to the artist — either land that they or their family travelled, from the pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling) era to now. During the pujiman period, Martu would traverse very large distances annually in small family groups, moving seasonally from water source to water source, and hunting and gathering bush tucker as they went. At this time, one’s survival depended on their intimate knowledge of the location of resources; thus physical elements of Country, such as sources of kapi (water), tali (sandhills), different varieties of warta (trees, vegetation), ngarrini (camps), and jina (tracks) are typically recorded with the use of a system of iconographic forms universally shared across the desert.

An additional layer of meaning in the work relates to more intangible concepts; life cycles based around kalyu (rain, water) and waru (fire) are also often evident. A thousands-of-years-old practice, fire burning continues to be carried out as both an aid for hunting and a means of land management today. As the Martu travelled and hunted they would burn tracts of land, ensuring plant and animal biodiversity and reducing the risk of unmanageable, spontaneous bushfires. The patchwork nature of regrowth is evident in many landscape works, with each of the five distinctive phases of fire burning visually described with respect to the cycle of burning and regrowth.

Finally, metaphysical information relating to a location may also be recorded; Jukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives chronicle the creation of physical landmarks, and can be referenced through depictions of ceremonial sites, songlines, and markers left in the land. Very often, however, information relating to Jukurrpa is censored by omission, or alternatively painted over with dotted patterns.

“We’ve been in Punmu long time. We moved from Camp 61 where we were schooling the kids there. And moved to Punmu, and we stayed there. Big mob of us came back in a truck, in an old tractor with the trailer. That old truck still there at the turnoff. We came in that one now. Me and my partner and my two kids, a boy and a girl. We went there. I had Nyri [her youngest boy] in Punmu. Right there, next to the school, near the lake. It was good! We started a school there in the bough shed. Before it was in a building. I was there with my two kids. No power or houses. Just a tent. We used to make pujiman (traditional, desert dwelling era) style, with the warta [wood] and leaves, make some shade. Big mob of us there, they all finish now. Jakayu [Biljabu], Minyawe [Miller] there. Then we made the houses.

Good work with the rangers [Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa ranger program]. We see the waterholes, they tell us about our family trees. Go see our Country. Mother’s Country and father’s Country. And now we painting with Martumili. I want to go do painting more. Lovely one, juri [lovely] one. Sit down. I sit down all day, nothing to do at home.”
— Debra Thomas

Debra grew up in Nullagine and went to school both in Nullagine and Jigalong. Later in life she settled at Camp 61, an outstation on Bilanooka Station where she helped set up a community school. Moving to Punmu during the Return to Country movement of the early 1980s, Debra assisted with the establishment of the Punmu School in the community’s bough shelter.

Over the last several years, Debra has learned to paint by sitting with the older women. She particularly enjoys learning about Country from the senior women and ensuring that her children spend time watching their elders paint and learning the stories for and history of their Country. While painting, she talks about the subtle sparkling colours of the plants and flowers that grow around Karlamilyi (Rudall River). In recent years she has also worked as a ranger for the Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa ranger program.

Debra paints her mother's country, which is Warnman country, surrounding Karlamilyi (Rudall River) as well as her father's country, around Kunawarritji.

Martumili Artists was established in late 2006 and supports Martu artists in Kunawarritji, Punmu, Parnngurr, Jigalong, Warralong, Irrungadji (Nullagine), and Parnpajinya (Newman). Many Martu artists have close relationships with established artists amongst Yulparija, Kukatja, and other Western Desert peoples and are now gaining recognition in their own right for their diverse, energetic, and unmediated painting styles. Their works reflect the dramatic geography and scale of their homelands in the Great Sandy Desert and Rudall River regions of Western Australia. Martumili Artists represents speakers of Manyjilyjarra, Warnman, Kartujarra, Putijarra, and Martu Wangka languages, many of whom experienced first contact with Europeans in the 1960s. The artists include painters working in acrylics and oils, as well as weavers coiling baskets and sculptors working in wood, grass, and wool. Martu artists proudly maintain their creative practices whilst pursuing social and cultural obligations across the Martu.