Wati Kutjarra

Tjumpo Tjapanangka and Sam Tjampitjin led broadly similar lives. Both were born about 1930 in nearby parts of a remote region of Western Australia. Both lived traditional desert lifestyles before moving to Balgo mission as young men. There, in the mid-1980s, the friends began painting. They later considered themselves to be ‘the last living Kukatja custodians for Wilkinkarra’, the predominantly dry salt lake of Lake Mackay on the Western Australia–Northern Territory border.

Their collaborative painting Wati Kutjarra offers more dualities: a work by two artists from adjoining countries, about the Two Men Tjukurpa (ancestral story), presented in two sections. The left represents the Two Men by their campfire, surrounded by sand dunes; the right represents the hiding places of the elusive malu (wallaby) they are hunting. To flush out the malu, the hunters later set a fire that flares destructively out of control, forming the lake, Wilkinkarra.

Barry Patton, Tarnanthi Writer & Researcher