Description
Details
- Type: Screenprint
- Edition: 99
- Paper: Magnani Pescia 300gsm White
- Size: 760 x 560 (image extends to edge of the paper )
- Printer: Theo Tremblay, Editions Tremblay NFP Bungendore, NSW, 2002
Story
Bai Bai, a senior law person responded to the theme, Love/Magic/Ceremony, by producing three images on linoleum, which have been integrated into a single print in sequence from top to bottom. The top section represents Ngaanjatjarra her grandmothers country, which is located south west of Balgo in the Great Sandy Desert, where she lived and hunted as a young woman. The Tjukurrpa (ancestral creation) story for this place tells of some wicked young men who came here far from the west. The old woman responsible for this country wove a long hair belt central to the top panel image, and used it to tie them up. The second central panel is a series of brightly coloured stripes representing the various coloured fat, feathers, sand and material ephemera used in important ceremony here. These lines also represent the tali or sand hills which dominate Bai Bai’s country. The third panel ia another image of Nganjatjarra showing the elongated soak surrounded by tali or sand hills. In a second level of meaning it depicts women participating in a ceremony around a dance field representing the soakwater. Sand hills radiate out in the surrounding country.
Artist Biography: Baibai Napangarti
Lived: c1939 – 2020
Language group: Kukatja
Bai Bai was a senior law woman of Balgo. Her country extended from Mangkayi in the Stansmore Ranges to just south of Yagga Yagga. Bai Bai has travelled extensively for cultural reasons, and in 1989 she danced at the Shinju Matsuri Festival in Perth. She spent her youth and early adult years travelling through her family’s land learning traditional law and culture.
She began to paint in 1986 in Balgo, and since then has introduced younger members of her family to painting. She has been involved in several publications including Yarrtji: Six women’s stories from the Great Sandy Desert, 1997, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s History Awards in 1998. Bai Bai is a long serving member of the Kimberley Land Council and a strong practitioner of women’s law and culture in Balgo. Bai Bai was married to artist Sunfly Tjampitjin (dec).
