Doris Bush Nungarrayi Luritja, b. 1942
48 1/8 x 59 7/8 in
Here, Doris Bush Nungarrayi has recorded the traditional tools and weapons that were used by her and her friends in the bush. Included are kali (boomerang), wana (digging stick), puli (grinding stone), kutitji (shield), kulata (spear) and kantikanti (hitting stick). Documented also is the creation and secular story of the meeting between a snake and a goanna as both creation and secular beings; As Nungarrayi relates: "Snake this one, eating, here, at the water. This mob over there are stabbing it with a spear. He’s trying to bite and eat that one over there. And that over there is coming to look at him, that one. This one, he’s watching, he is, ‘ooohhh!’, sneaking up intending to bite it. That one over there …he bit him, that goanna yep, this one. Coming to here, coming through the bush to the water, ‘ooohhh!’, they see it! ‘What happened here?’
Over there, a goanna is coming along. Going, going into the bush, across the water, sneaking up to try and bite it. Yeah, this one, two men standing, over there is another, there watching all this the snake, see? And see this line ... he’s slowly sneaking along it. After that, that one over there stabs him with a spear, with a spear he stabbed. Went and got that goanna and ate it, over there came, and see all this mob."
This painting is one of 6 works by Doris Bush Nungarrayi that were commissioned by the Art Gallery of South Australia to feature at AGSA in the Tarnanthi exhibition of Aboriginal art, 2021.