Artist statement

This collaborative painting by the senior women artists of Walungurru (Kintore), brings together a collection of stories relating directly to their most celebrated sites. These sites surrounding Walungurru are deeply significant to Pintupi women, are interconnected, and refer to a number of different spiritual beings and ancestral events. The stories reveal what took place at these sites, how the country was formed and how their ancestors travelled through it from one site to the next.

The sites to the south include Yilpikarri, where a heavily pregnant ancestral Mingari (Thorny Devil) was unable to give birth. After a long and painful labour her stomach eventually broke open with the eggs spilling out, later becoming the rocky hills in the area. Not far from Yillpikarri in the country immediately surrounding Tjukurla, ancestral women adorned in nyimparra (hair-string skirts) gathered for ceremonies. They later continued their journey towards the north

Closer to Walungurru and slightly south-east is Yuwalki, a site visited by the Kungka Kutjarra (Two Travelling Women), who passed through the area on their way to Walungurru. They too held ceremonies and gathered a number of food types including desert raisins, bush tomato, and wangunu grass seed from the plant Eragrostis eriopoda) which is ground into a paste is then cooked on the coals as a type of damper or unleavened bread.