Design and Art Australia Online

Tjawina Roberts, a Pitjantjatjara artist, was born around 1940 at Kata Kurti-kurti. In the tjukurpa connected to the rockhole where she was born a woman went to get water while carrying the head of her dead husband in a wooden bowl. As she lent down his head rolled out of the dish into the water. Her husband’s head is still there, she could not find it.
After her mother died, Tjawina, her sister Karrika Belle Davidson and her brother Tjuruparu Watson were brought to the Warburton mission by her family. There she learnt prayers, hymns and Bible stories; to read and write; and to sew and do work in the garden and kitchen. She was also introduced to drawing materials such as pencils, inks, crayons and chalk. During holidays, especially over the early summer period when rockholes were full of water, Tjawina left the mission with family to walk back to her country. She was taught how to survive in the desert and the tjukurpa by the minyma pampa (old women).
Many members of her extended family settled at Patinintjarra, near to where Papulankutja (Blackstone) was later established in the 1980s. When she left the school, Tjawina moved to Patinintjarra and camped at the edge of the mining camp with other anangu. She spent some time at the government settlement at Musgrove Park, now the community at Amata, married, and had three children, Jocelyn, Dino and Renita. Tjawina, her husband and tjitji travelled to Irrunytju where they lived in the camp near the small nickel and chrysoprase mine. Tjawina’s husband worked at the mine for food rations. To supplement the rations and the bushfood that they hunted and gathered, Tjawina made punu and traded them for butter, jam and tinned food at the miners shop.
Tjawina lives in Irrunytju with her children and grandchildren and extended members of the family. She is a member of the Irrunytju Arts Advisory Committee, and the Deputy Chair of Irrunytju Community. She is an advocate for the art centre and community. Here she trades her carved punu artefacts with the regional cooperative, Maraku Arts and Crafts, and weaves fine tjanpi baskets with spinifex, natural and dyed raffia. In her paintings Tjawina engages with ancient tjukurpa as well as contemporary issues. After the recognition of Native Title in 2005 Tjawina painted images which symbolically depicted the different communities in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands.

Writers:

Knights, Mary

Date written:

2006

Last updated:

2011