Artist: Jillian Giles
Size: 91,4cm x 121.9cm
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Biography
Jillian grew up in Kaltukatjara (Docker River) with her parents and her five siblings. She went to school in Alice Springs. She learnt to paint from her mother the Tjukurrpa of the Tjukurla area. She has been living and painting both in Alice Springs and across the Ngaanyatjarra lands in recent years, and visits family in Tjukurla where she paints with the Tjarlirli artists.
Story from the certificate of authenticity:
This is my mother's story at Purrungu near Tjurkurla. There's a waterhole there. People would come and sit down and sleep there. There's a rockhole underground, and Tali (sandhills), there's Kapi (water) and a lake. Irititja, long ago, all the ladies were travelling around getting bush tucker, crossing the sandhills, with their families. When the rain came, they saw all that water. They go other places, maybe Pangkurrpirri or Yilpikarri, but they always comeback.
This Tjukurrpa is Minyma Kutjarra, two ladies, there at the rockhole, sitting round and digging. One of the ladies, she was a mother, she had a baby, so she got milk. Mother gotta go in and get the water from that underground rockhole. Go in when it's full up, wet, and put that kapi on her mimi (breasts). But there was a snake at that waterhole so she can't turn around, can'tturn her back to the snake, she just gotta keep walking back from the kapi. just get that kapi and reverse back. She got that kapi and went back to the other ladies.
It's mum's dreaming, I can't do a different story. She told me i gotta do it like this, and when she passed away, we always do it like this. I was gonna put the two ladies {in the canvas}, minyma, but i thought leave it, it's right. I put the lake, the rockhole, the water,and the sandhills, Tali,like my mum always did. That's the same story, happening in the same place. Yuwa, really Tjukurrpa.
