Kunawarritji - Nora Wompi

Wompi paints the Country around her homelands of Kunawarritji, a place associated with the Minyipuru Jukurrpa (Seven Sister Dreaming). In 1906, Kunawarrtiji also became a well on the Canning Stock Route, and from an early age Wompi and her family had encounters with the white men who drove cattle along the route. As a young woman, Wompi followed the drovers north to Balgo Mission, where she stayed for many years. She learnt to paint there with her close friend, Eubena Nampitjin, and returned to Kunawarritji, where she lives and paints today, when it became a community in its own right.
Martumili Artists was established in late 2006 and supports Mart artists in Kunawarritji, Punmu, Parnngurr, Jigalong, Warralong, Irrungadji (Nullagine) and Parnajinya (Newman). Many Mart artists have close relationships with established artists amongst Yulparija, Kukatja and other Western Desert peoples and are now gaining recognition in their own right for their diverse, energetic and unmediated painting styles. Their works reflect the dramatic geography and scale of their homelands in the Great Sandy Desert and Rudall River regions of Western Australia. Martumili Artists represents speakers of Manyjilyjarra, Warnman, Kartujarra, Putijarra and Mart Wangka languages, many of whom experienced first contact with Europeans in the 1960s. The artists include painters, working in acrylics and oils, as well as weavers coiling baskets and sculptors working in wood, grass and wool. Mart artists proudly maintain their creative practices whilst pursuing social and cultural obligations across the Mart homelands.