Click to enlargeb. c.1953
- Region
- Western Desert
- Community
- Amunturrngu (Mount Liebig, Amunturrungu, Watiyawanu, New Bore)
- Language group
- Luritja
While Rock Holes and Country Near The Olgas, 2010
synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen
265 x 183 cm
Price on application — enquire
- Provenance
- Palya Proper Fine Art, Alice Springs, NT Cooee Aboriginal Art Gallery, NSW
- Artwork story
- Colleen was the wife of famed artist Bill Whiskey. The country depicted in this work lies to the north of Kata Tjuta (the Olgas), hidden in some of the most arid and uncompromising land on the continent. From the late 1880's police were posted to protect the interests of the advancing pastoralists in this region, and they pursued those tribesmen who killed cattle to protect their waterholes far into the 'back country'. They were tracked, chained and taken for trial in Port Augusta. As a climate of fear descended, Anangu (Western Desert people) left their country for the relative safety of mission-run ration stations. The country to the west and southwest of the MacDonnell Ranges was gradually depopulated, and during the 1920s, a period of prolonged drought saw Anangu gravitate to outposts established by Lutheran evangelists on the margins of the desert. Colleen and her family lived for a time at Areyonga, before moving further north to settle at Amunturrngu (Mount Liebig), then an outstation of Papunya. While Rock Holes and Country Near The Olgas is a compelling work depicting his country, it is intentionally cryptic. Specific information about the Dreaming is purposefully suffused in fields of ambiguous dots. Water places, such as Pirupa Akla are marked by sets of concentric circles, their dazzling presence representing their powerful life-giving significance, rather than their actual size. The actions of the White Cockatoo and Crow ancestors are encrypted as dotted patches that reference topographic features associated with the Dreaming. The minimal depiction in this particular work conveys the attenuated distance between landmarks in Whiskey's country, where isolated water places are concealed among swathes of vegetation. Remaining true to the conduct of his ancestors, who had kept their distance from explorers, Whiskey protects the secrets of her country behind the mirage of heat, refraction from shattered quartz and the smoke of signal fires.