Ilyarnayt - Ruby Kngwarreye Morton

"Ilyarnayt. It’s growing everywhere in Ngarwenyerra. My country. On those sandhills back there. Pretty flowers, yellow ones. Tyape likes them too. He living in there, inside those roots. We dig them up. Tyape kere mwerr-angker." Ruby Kngwarrey Morton

Ruby Kngwarreye Morton paints the flowering acacia, Ilyarnayt, which grows across her Country in the Utopia region of Central Australia In this work, she depicts Ilyarnayt, the flowering acacia that blooms across the sandhills of her homeland after rain. The small yellow flowers spread widely through the landscape and are closely connected to the lives of both people and animals on Country. Ruby speaks of Tyape, the witchetty grub, which lives beneath the roots of the acacia plants and is collected as an important bush food.

Part of a large and significant artistic family from Utopia, Ruby Morton Kngwarreye was among the younger generation influenced by the celebrated Utopia batik movement and the painting traditions established by senior women in the community. Her paintings continue these stories of Country, bush foods and seasonal change through rhythmic fields of colour and mark-making.