That's How It Was : Three Strong Women

That’s How It Was : Three Strong Women

That’s How It Was: Three Strong Women Sun Valley USA 20 December 2021 - 31 January 2022

Mulyatingki Marney Nyangulya Katie Nalgood Mayiwalku (Maywokka) Chapman

That’s How It Was: Three Strong Women This exhibition celebrates the art of three women from the remote northwest of Western Australia, who paint at the Spinifex Hill Studio in South Hedland, over a thousand miles north of the State capital Perth: Pilbara artists Mulyatingki Marney and Mayiwalku (Maywokka) Chapman, and Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, from the Kimberley.

Though their practices differ in artistic focus and aesthetics, all three artists are united in expressing their versions of ‘that’s how it was’ their deep connection to the living and ever-present significance of ngurra [home Country or camp]. Sisters Mulyatingki and Mayiwalku are pujimanpa [desert born], while Nyangulya was born and grew up on a pastoral station north of the mighty Fitzroy River.

Martu woman and senior artist Mulyatingki Marney (language group Manyjiljarra) describes her pujiman [desert born, nomadic] childhood, living and walking in her ngurra in the central Great Sandy Desert area:

I was born in Nyinyiri [soak], my mother had me in desert. We arrived: [my sisters] Mayiwalku [Maywokka

Chapman], Ngaranyjapayi [Nyanjilpayi Nancy Chapman], Miyatingki [Mulyatingki], two brothers passed away.

We were going walking, we were walking. We went walking along, no clothing, we were naked. Big hills, we

were big, big kids ones we were. We were carrying our brothers, two brothers passed away.

We would eat pussy cat, bush man, no kangaroo. We would make a wind break and then make fire. We would cook and eat. [At the] spring we would stand and drink, scoop the water with our hands, no cup, no cup, with our hands, water, water.

Following their parents’ deaths, Mulyatingki’s family continued to traverse the desert, and occasionally met with other family groups before eventually walking into Balfour Downs Station sometime in the 1960s. Here, they were collected by mission staff and taken to Jigalong Mission. They were one of the last Martu families to leave the desert.

As youngsters, Mulyatingki and her siblings drew sustenance from the tali [sandhills], warta [vegetation], and the many water sources of ngurra. It is these waterholes, hills, and bountiful hunting areas known intimately through both real life experience and the recounting of jukurrpa [Dreamtime] narratives that Mulyatingki depicts in her colour-drenched aerial perspectives.

Ranging from succulent raspberry hues through to the lavenders, ambers and rich saffron of the desert, Mulyatingki’s palette offers a glimpse of the chromatic drama of storm and sun slant on the topography of her Country. Centred in many of her paintings are the life giving and ancestrally significant waterholes and springs: sometimes a single, blue-rimmed sphere, other times a cluster of soot-filled ellipses. Around these water sources radiate patterns of drift and energy, the mark making stippled, fluid, or linear. Marks of an artist at the height of her powers.

Now in her eighties, Mulyatingki lives between the remote Aboriginal community of Punmu and the coastal Pilbara town of Port Hedland. The breadth and virtuosity of her artistic output distinguishes her as a seminal member of a tradition of painting that emerged from the Western Deserts in the early 2000s. This is a largely (though not exclusively) matriarchal tradition, led by strong women whose knowledge and example has helped to anchor and inform a highly respected movement of contemporary Aboriginal art, and continues to guide the practice of emerging generations of Martu artists. While she often paints at the Spinifex Hill Studio, Mulyatingki is also a founding member of Martumili Artists, a collective which since the mid-2000s has supported the art practices of the traditional custodians of the Great Sandy, Little Sandy and Gibson Deserts as well as the Karlamilyi area: regions that collectively span thousands upon thousands of remote square miles.

Mulyatingki’s elder sister and fellow artist Mayiwalku (Maywokka) Chapman is also associated with Martumili Artists as well as Spinifex Hill Studio. Like Mulyatingki, desert-born Mayiwalku (language group Manyjiljarra) also depicts Country from an aerial perspective. Some of her canvases are composed into blocks and furrows of intense colour, while others employ pastels to hypnotic effect. Mayiwalku references the geographical and physcal features of the landscape: the springs and sandhills frequented by her sisters and brothers, and the places she r emembers from the days while their parents were still alive: Me baby, eating sand! [laughs]. I been big one [eldest child]. My sister Mulyatingki she told me

“May, you cheeky one!” I been mujarri [run away], me. I been hit him, my sister. She been crying, telling my mummy. She been hit me then. My daddy always gone long way, hunting marlu [kangaroo] and pussy cat. Get him with a spear. Good feed. He been bring them and cook ‘em.

While the desert landscapes are important references for Mayiwalku and Mulyatingki, the art of Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, while still firmly founded on Country, contemplates a different theme. A Walmajarri woman, born in the mid-1940s to pastoral-worker parents at Liveringa Station in the Kimberley, Nyangulya paints birds, explaining:

I started painting about my father’s land, then I changed my way of painting. I paint birds bcause b irds are the one thing, they wake us up, early hours in the morning, early birds. And some birds, they make noise in the daytime. They make me go to sleep, too. It’s a little sweet music to my ears music to my ears and remind me of my old days, how I was growing up. When we used to live in the bush there was lots of birds. So noisy. And I’m thinking to myself, one day, when I grow up, I’m going to paint you birds.

Nyangulya’s affectionately rendered portraits of cockatoos, budgies, parrots, kookaburras and finches draw on a repertoire of colour as evocative and tonal as their subjects’ songs. Her paintings have an endearingly naïve and graphic quality. Sometimes solo, sometimes in a group, the birds are usually perched on branches, against backgrounds of varying hues. Some settings adopt the almost pop-art blue typical of a Western Australian sky on a steaming summer day. Others, rendered in pink or lilac or peach, evoke the sensuous palette of a Pilbara sunset or Kimberley dawn. Playful titles like Another Little Fat One only add to the allure of these pieces.

Different ngurra, subject matter, diverse lived experiences and varying aesthetic styles: the powerful work by these three distinctive artists in That’s How It Was: Three Strong Women shows how Spinifex Hill Studio continues to provide a space for individual practices to flourish, and ongoing stories of Country to be compellingly told.

Mags Webster FORM, December 2021

Right: Mulyatingki Marney, Untitled, acrylic on linen 61 x 61cm Spinifex Hill Studios 21-606

Mulyatingki Marney Mulyatingki Marney is the sister of fellow artists Donald Moko, May Wokka Chapman and Nancy Nyanjilpayi Chapman. She was born at Nyinyari, near the Canning Stock Route. Her country encompasses the Punmu, Kunawarritji and Karlamilyi River regions.

Mulyatingki walked extensively through this area with her family as a young girl. Following the death of her parents, the sisters continued to travel in the desert alone, though at times they would meet and travel with other family groups.

When her family saw white people for the first time, they hid from them in a cave until nightfall. With the construction of the Canning Stock Route in 1910, they increasingly came into contact with European and Martu drovers travelling along the Route. Finally, following an extreme and prolonged drought, Mulyatingki’s family walked into Balfour Downs Station, where they were collected by mission staff and taken to Jigalong Mission. They were one of the last families to leave the desert.

In 1982, after living for many years at Jigalong Mission, Mulyatingki returned to her homelands with the Return to Country movement. Today, Mulyatingki continues to live in Punmu Community with her sister Nyanjilpayi Nancy Chapman.

Language group: Manyjilyjarra

Mulyatingki Marney Manjiljar Country acrylic on linen 91.5 x 152cm Spinifex Hill #19-935

Mulyatingki Marney, Untitled, acrylic on linen 61 x 91.5cm Spinifex Hill Studios #19-1278

Mulyatingki Marney, Untitled, acrylic on linen 61 x 91.5cm Spinifex Hill Studios #20-681

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood

‘I was born in Liveringa Station in the Kimberley – you come to the Myroodah river crossing then you’re there. I grew up there and went to school at Camballin, then I went to Derby High School and then to boarding school at Sir James Mitchell in Mount Lawley.

I came back to Camballin to finish my school there. I been coming up and back, Kimberley to Port Hedland. I like coming here to [do] art: keeping busy, better than sitting at home. Painting and relaxing, that’s why I like coming here.

Birds are the first things we see, you know, when we wake up. See and hear.

Birds are like roosters to us, they wake us up in the mornings. And when the sun goes down they go to sleep and we go to sleep. You know us old people start and finish the day with the birds. That’s everyday life between birds and humans, you know. That’s what I think about anyway.’

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood has a strong affinity with birds, the diverse feathered creatures filling her personal history as well as cultural life. They are as much a part of her Country as she is, and their songs are the sound memories of her home. Nalgood started out painting only the birds native to her Country in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, and collaborated with family members to help her sketch out their forms. Her technical skill has since become more refined, and she now works independently. Her imagination has also expanded, and she looks to birds from across Western Australia, finding inspiration in their different colours, forms, and personalities.

Language group: Walmajarri

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, Parrot No.I, 45.5 x 45.5cm, acrylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #21-179

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, Parrot No. 2, 45.5 x 45.5cm, acrylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #21-180

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, Another Little Fat One, 45.5 x 45.5cm, acrylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #21-72

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, Little Fat Bird, 45.5 x 45.5cm, acrylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #21-74

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, Two Storks, 91 x 122cm, acrylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #21-202

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, Fairy Wren, 56 x 51cm, acrylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #21=798

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, Willy Wagtail, 45.5 x 45.5cm, acrylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #21-826

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, Magpie, 61 x 71 cm, acrylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #20-912

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, Parrots, 76 x 76cm, acrylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #21-209

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, Cockatoo, 71 x 61cm, acrylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #21-23

Nyangulya Katie Nalgood, Two Wrens, 91 x 61cm, acrylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #21-815

Maywokka Chapman

‘My name Mayiwalku. I’m pujiman (nomadic desert dweller). [I had] no clothes, nothing. Me Karimarra [skin group]. My daughter Milangka, mummy Milangka, daddy Purungu. [I was] born long way [away] – Ngarurr I been born. He [They] been coming back [with me], mummy and daddy. He [They] been bringing little one- me. He [They] been walk around, go round. Walking, walking with me. Me baby, eating sand! (laughs) My daddy (motions her father hitting her hand). I been big one [the eldest child]. My sister Mulyatingki she told me “May you cheeky one!” I been mujarri (run away), me. I been hit him, my sister. She been crying, telling my mummy. She been hit me then. My daddy always gone long way, hunting marlu (kangaroo) and pussy cat. Get him with a spear. Good feed. He been bring them and cook ‘em.

I been get married in Warralong. My nyupa (husband) finished now.

Good man. Big one! I’m a single now. Too much children! Dennis, Sally, Pauly, Charlie, Arnold, Doreen and Sandra. My daughter Doreen I been get him [gave birth to] near to Jigalong. All the boys [were born in] Karntimarta, Warralong. In Warralong painting, painting. No fishing – no car! Only painting, painting every day! Yuwai! [Yes!]’ May was born in the desert at Ngarurr soak in the 1940s. She is the eldest sister of fellow artists Nancy Nyanjilpayi Chapman, Mulyatingki Marney and Marjorie Yates (dec). As a child and through to young adulthood, Mayiwalku travelled through her parents’ Country with their family. This region encompassed the areas surrounding Punmu, Karlamilyi River and Kunawarritji. Following the death of their parents, the sisters continued to travel in the desert alone, though at times they would meet and travel with other family groups.

Language group: Manyjilyjarra

Maywokka (Mayiwalku) Chapman, Untitled, 122 x 122cm (48 x 48 inches) arylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #21-545

Maywokka (Mayiwalku) Chapman, Untitled, 122 x 122cm (48 x 48 inches) arylic on linen, Spinifex Hill #21-372

That’s How it Was | Three Stong Women Sun Valley USA Dec 2021 - Jan 2022