Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art

These shields were manufactured by Aboriginal men primarily for fighting but they were also used on ceremonial occasions. Depending on the nature of the ceremony, certain iconographic designs were painted on the surface of the shield and employed in different parts of the ritual to evoke the power of ancestral beings originating in the Tjukurrpa (Dreaming). Like the iconography in the early paintings, the designs represent certain events and activities relating to the ancestral heroes as they wandered across the landscape. The design that appears on shield number X 14024 relates to an important ancestor of the Warumungu people, Pukulungara. He is connected with a Wind Dreaming site situated around the Davenport Range, south of Tennant Creek in Central Australia. The meandering lines that curl and skip across the surface of the shield are reminiscent of the turbulent gusts of wind, or 'willy willies' that blow hither and thither across the Western Desert, producing great columns of dust and flying debris. Similarly, every design painted on the shields here represents an ancestral being relating to an actual Dreaming site, all of which are maintained and celebrated by living custodians.