WOMEN’S COLLABORATIVE PROJECT –NANCY DONEGAN, PAMELA HOGAN, KENDREA HOGAN, KUNMANARA WALKER AND DONNA BROWN

Large collaborative paintings like ‘Tjintirkara’, reflect ways of learning, sharing knowledge and the passing of important cultural knowledge. They are created as collaborations but are spaces for more senior artists and knowledge holders to educate younger artists, resulting in works that reflect continued connection and enduing attachment to the places often depicted within the works themselves.

Kungkarungkalpa, also known as the Seven Sisters is a major Western Desert Tjukurpa prevalent throughout the Spinifex lands. It is an epic songline that tells the story of a group of women who journey across vast terrain, carrying out ritual obligations, whilst being pursued from a distance by Nyiru, a lustful trickster of a man in pursuit of a wife.

Women’s Collaborative Project: Nancy Donegan, Pamela Hogan, Kendrea Hogan, Kunmanara Walker and Donna Brown. Image courtesy: Spinifex Arts Project

Nancy was born in the hospital at Kalgoorlie in 1973, but her traditional lands are actually some 900 kilometres to the north east in the Great Victoria Desert. Nancy lived with the old people in the mission at Cundeelee after they were moved out of the Great Victoria Desert due to the atomic testing in the late 1960s. After moving to Coonana and Warburton for a time, today, Nancy is back in the Great Victoria Desert, in Tjuntjuntjara, with her children and extended family.

Born in Kalgoorlie, Pamela Hogan grew up at Cundalee Mission and Coonana, a place she says is “gone now”. After a move to Blackstone, Pamela spent many years working at the Arts Centre until, like the other women in the group, she moved back to Tjuntjuntjara in 2019, where a lot of her family live. “It’s really nice going out on Country with the old ladies now, it helps me feel connected and strong,” she says. “It’s good at Tjuntjuntjara, with the old people. Happy and safe.”

Kendrea comes from a family of artists, her father Timo Hogan is one of the Spinifex Arts Project’s leading painters. Timo and Susan Young (her mother) were living in Kalka in the APY Lands, when she was born and the family lived in Kalka for the first 10 years of Kendrea’s life, later moving to Tjuntjuntjara. Kendrea has a great passion for the arts and has recently began painting with the Spinifex Arts Project.