Design and Art Australia Online

Ngiyu Watson was born around 1940 at Yampil, near Kumanara Bore. Ngiyu belongs to the Pitjantjatjara language and cultural group. Living a semi-nomadic lifestyle Ngiyu grew up in the desert. ' Kata Ala. My father’s country, near Kumanara Bore, has three rockholes. We used to walk in the desert from rockhole to rockhole. It is a very good place. It has big sandhills. We were happy here, all the kids used to eat ili (figs). You have to dig to find the kapi (water), all the minyma know where to dig.’
The first 'whitefella’ she saw were miners at Blackstone. Her family would sometimes camp near the mining camp and get food. When she was a young woman she settled at Musgrave Park, a government settlement, now the community of Amata. While there she did some work in the clinic. Ngiyu married Tjuruparu Watson , she is his first wife ' number one minima’. They had children and returned to her homelands. Ngiyu makes punu objects which she trades locally and through the regional cooperative Maraku Arts and Crafts, which was established by anangu in 1984. The co-operative is based at Mutitjulu where it has offices, a warehouse and a retail outlet. Buyers travel to communities throughout the Western Desert Region, including Irrunytju, every two to three months buying works from hundreds of artists.
The twisted roots of white river gums which grow at the edges of dry creek beds are frequently dug up to craft coolamon and small artefacts including tinka (lizards) and clapping sticks. Women often gather around campfires heating bent wires or sharpened sticks to burn walka (designs) into punu (wooden objects). The designs are similar to sand drawing designs and include dots and a pattern of semi-circles representing wiltja with anangu sleeping inside.
Men, including Nyigu’s husband Tjuruparu Watson cut segments out of the trunks of mulga trees to shape shields and spear throwers, and use the thin straight branches of tacoma bushes to make spear shafts. The spear-heads are bound with sinew from the ankle of a kangaroo and strengthened with resin that the women make from spinifex of Xanthorrhoea grass tree. The shields are decorated with ancient incised designs that refer to the tjukurpa of the owner’s country.
Nyigu’s paintings are highly stylised representations of the water holes and ancestral tracks around Kumanara Bore. 'There was mai pulka (much plant food) – kampurarpa (desert raisins), wayanu (Quandongs), and arnguli (plum).’ Her work is notable for the exuberant use of colours. Crimson, cerulean blue, orange and pastel pinks, apricots, mauves and yellows are layered in a dense patchwork of coloured dots.

Writers:

Knights, Mary

Date written:

2006

Last updated:

2011