Untitled

The Art Centre documentation for this work states:

This painting depicts designs associated with the rockhole and soakage water site of Marrapinti, west of Pollock Hills in Western Australia. The lines in the painting represent the creekbed at the site and the sandhills that surround it.

In ancestral times a group of women of the Nangala and Napangati kinship subsections camped at this site during their travels towards the east. While at the site the women made nose bones, also known as Marrapinti, which are worn through a hole made in the nose web. During ceremonies relating to Marrapinti the older women pierced the nasal septums of the younger women who were participating in the ceremony. Nose bones were originally used by both men and women but are now only inserted by the older generation on ceremonial occasions.

Upon completion of the ceremonies at Marrapinti the women continued their travels east passing through Wala Wala, Ngaminya and Wirrulnga, before heading north-east to Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay).