Across the desert

Aboriginal Batik from Central Australia

Yuendumu

The momentous reappraisal of Aboriginal women’s culture and art that underpins this exhibition owes much to Yuendumu where anthropologist Nancy D. Munn conducted pioneering fieldwork into Warlpiri iconography. Munn’s research clearly showed that women have their own ritual designs which differ in content and execution from those of men.16 In women’s ceremonies or yawulyu, principles of fertility, growth and activities at a specific locality are stressed, whereas in men’s ceremonies the routes taken by ancestors linking significant places are of primary importance.

Women’s kuruwarri (ancestral designs) therefore tend to be curvilinear, circular and formed of separate units in abundant clusters whereas straight or meandering track lines, lines of sites or ‘song lines’ dominate men’s designs. The journeys of Janganpa (the marsupial mouse), for instance, are represented by the meander of his tail (penis) between two lines of paw marks as in Neville Japangardi Poulson’s Marsupial mouse Dreaming 1986.

Synchronous with the establishment of Warlukurlangu Artists in 1985, for women as well as men, Yuendumu batik grew out of Warlpiri, Anangu and Anmatyerr interconnections and a constant movement between communities. In the formative stages of its development, adult educator Peter Toyne arranged for Anangu women from Ernabella to conduct workshops in the community and some of the batik artists also went to Utopia where they witnessed and assisted Anmatyerr and Alyawarr women in making batik. The preference at Yuendumu was to apply the liquid wax with a brush to execute the designs and background. Although the tjantings were sourced, they were not popular, and people treated the lengths as they would canvases. The Yuendumu are therefore more similar to the painterly quality achieved by Utopia and Kintore.