"This dreaming tells about the bush turkey. It is a big bird that flies around from place to place searching for food. They eat insects. The men hunt for the turkeys with boomerangs. The men hunt together to catch the turkeys." (Warnayayka Art Centre)
Lily Hargraves Nungarrayi (1930 - 2019) was one of the old desert walkers, born in the Tanami Desert in her country near Jilla Well (Chilla Well). When, in 1950, the Warlpiri population at Yuendemu had outgrown the settlement’s housing capabilities, Nungarrayi moved to the settlement of Lajamanu along with 1000 others. A tiny, very isolated point in the north of the Warlpiri estate, ten hour’s drive south of Darwin and eight hours north-west of Alice Springs. Here, Nungarrayi resided until her death in 2019.
Lily Yirdingali Jurrah Hargraves Nungarrayi belongs among the ranks of Australia’s greatest Indigenous artists. Nungarrayi was ferocious, painting against the deliberate erasure of her culture, she was among the last in possession of some key aspects of Warlpiri sacred knowledge.
Every painting in Nungurray’s legacy seems to contain an earnest thought that a return to some dignified form of traditional life may be possible. Her painting practice was an effort toward recording a Warlpiri history that was at risk of erasure, for a Warlpiri people that, before colonisation, had had no need for a method to document its past.
