Artist: Doris Bush
Size: 58.5cm x 90cm
Medium: Acrylic on linen
Story from the certificate of authenticity:
Doris has painted a plentiful memory from her past in the early days when she was learning from her mother out at Wilura and Nyunmanu. Nyunmanu is a Dreaming site just to the south east of the remote Aboriginal community of Kintore in the Northern Territory.
Doris talks of her and her mother handling different types of Mangarri (food). As Doris talks about these memories, she enacts the handling and eating of Mai (food) and drinking Kapi (water). Doris speaks of breaking open Pura (big wild bush tomatoes), to eat the flesh and collecting and eating Ilyuru (a sweet natural cotton candy like bush food). Doris talks of different tools to collect this Mangarri, like Wana (digging sticks) and speaks of other parts of the fruitful landscape such as Watiya (trees).
Now, when Doris sits to paint she sits under a large Watiya and remembers that this same type of Watiya was at Nyumanu too and her and her mother would sit under it.
Doris recalls the whole family sitting around Nikiti way (without clothes in the old days) and without any other western tools. Doris explains, 'Billy can wiya! Blanket wiya! Just running around!'
Nyumannu is the site of a Dingo Tjukurrpa (Dreaming), south east of Kintore. Most of the Ancestral Dingoes and their pups from this place rose up into the sky and became the stars. However, the Ancestral Mother Dingo and her pup had gone out hunting and were too tired to rise up into the sky, so they turned into a large rock that marks the place of this sacred Tjukurrpa. A person sleeping in this place will dream of the Ancestral Dingo pups. This site belongs to Doris's mother.
