Bugai catalogue preview

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Warning: Readers should be aware that this document includes names and images of deceased people that might cause sadness or distress to Aboriginal readers.

Cover image: Kunawarritji (detail), Bugai Whyoulter, 2019.

Photograph courtesy of Martumili Artists.

B U G A I

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Bugai Whyoulter painting Untitled, 2014.

Photograph courtesy of Martumili Artists.

Bugai Whyoulter, 2008. Photograph courtesy of Martumili Artists.

2019 Bugai, The Goods Shed, FORM and Martumili Artists, Claremont, Australia 2011 Jartijiti (33) Bugai Whyoulter, Seva Frangos Art, Perth, Australia

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About the ar ti st

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

B U G A I

BUGAI WHYOULTER

2010 Bugai Whyoulter, Aboriginal and Pacific Art, Sydney, Australia

AWARDS 2019 Finalist, 36th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award 2018 Finalist, Hedland Art Awards 2018 Finalist, 35th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (with Cyril Whyoulter) 2017 Finalist, Hedland Art Awards 2014 Winner, Best work by an Indigenous Artist, Hedland Art Awards 2013 Finalist, 29th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award 2013 Finalist, Glencore Art Centre Award 2012 Finalist, Hedland Art Awards 2012 Finalist, Bankwest Contemporary Art Prize Birth Date

c. 1939

Language

Kartujarra

Skin

Purungu

Born

Pukayiyirna (Balfour Downs Station), Western Australia

Lives

Kunawarritji, Western Australia

2010 Finalist, Western Australian Indigenous Art Award

MAJOR COLLECTIONS Araluen Art Collection, Artbank, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, National Gallery of Victoria, National Museum of Australia

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2016 Finalist, Hedland Art Awards

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2019 - Bugai Whyoulter

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Acrylic on linen 300 x 125cm

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Kunawarritji

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Bugai Whyoulter is a significant figure in her community

Kim Kirkman

since 2007, describes how the artist’s raw gestural forms

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EVERY TIME SHE PAINTS SHE’S IN THAT PLACE

Bugai Whyoulter painting at Parnngurr art shed.

Photograph courtesy of National Museum of Australia.

whose profile emerged in synchronicity with her painting practice. Gabrielle Sullivan, the inaugural Manager of Martumili Artists, with whom Bugai has been painting have disrupted popular perceptions of Aboriginal art.

come off the mine site looking for a keepsake

was at first reluctant to paint. Encouraged to begin by

from his time working here, and he’s in his hi-vis,

close friends Nora Wompi and Nora Nungabar, her work

covered in dust and dirt and he wants to buy ‘a

was always distinct. Anna Davis and Megan Robson

really traditional painting’. In his head he’s got this

describe her paintings as “comprising thickly applied paint

idea of a dot painting that’s in ochre colours, and

in graceful gestural markings that are overlaid with fine dot

after being there a while and looking through the

work. Her palette stretches from soft pastel pinks, mauves

paintings and meeting the artists and hearing the

and turquoises to bright oranges, reds and yellows”. ²

stories, he ends up walking away with a pink Bugai

Whyoulter gained recognition and interest as a painter

painting. His whole idea of what Aboriginal art is

through her participation in the Canning Stock Route

has been shifted”.

Project (2007-2013) and Martumili’s first group exhibitions

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Whyoulter, who started out weaving baskets at Kunawaritji,

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“We’d have a driller come into the studio, who’s

in Randall Lane Gallery in Perth in 2007 and 2008.

This is the contemporary appeal of Bugai Whyoulter.

“She wasn’t really concerned with what other people were

Downs, Bugai is of the pujiman, meaning bush or

painting, she just did her thing and her thing was quite

desert born, generation and lived nomadically

different to other people,” Sullivan says. “She didn’t start

throughout Karlamilyi and the Great Sandy Desert

off on the soft delicate palette that characterises her work

for much of her early life. This unceasing travel

now. She started off doing squares, blocks of colour and

through the land gave Whyoulter an intimate

big empty spaces. I never worked out what made her do

knowledge of and deep connection with Country.

work in a certain way, why her work changed so much.

A prolific, brave artist, Whyoulter’s works are

She’s really close to fellow artist Kumpaya Girgaba but

“characterised by linear arabesques that are

she doesn’t paint anything like Kumpaya and Kumpaya

evocative of women’s body designs and the

doesn’t paint anything like her. She’s quiet. There’s zero

contours of country”, and “[l]ayered swathes...

ego attached to her artmaking”. Whyoulter doesn’t speak

echoing the ochres used in ceremony”. Hers is art

English so all communication is via gestures, pictures and

which affirms “the spiritual essence of the land, and

some very basic Manyjiljarra on the part of most non-Martu

the memories of her youth”. 1

working with her.

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Born at Pukayiyirna, now cattle station Balfour

Described to Sullivan by friend Nola Taylor as “a very

Nungabar is arriving in Kunawaritji late at night. You’d

kind and generous person,” Whyoulter’s influence

drive up to their house and they’d all be sitting together

has been considerable. “Bugai is so prolific in her art

outside, talking and playing with the dogs by the fire.

making that I think she has instilled a work ethic in

They were close and I think they all influenced each

other artists,” Sullivan says. “Artists and family would

other. I see much of Bugai’s influence in their work”.

comment on how many exhibitions Bugai was in and how many paintings she sold. My response would be

Anthropologist John Carty describes the bond between

that she is a hard worker but she isn’t just painting to

Wompi, Nungabar and Whyoulter as embodying

sell paintings; she enjoys it, she puts everything into it,

kutjunka, a Martu way of painting which translates in

she tries new things. She is a brave painter. If you look

desert language as ‘together as one’ and encapsulates

at her paintings from 2007 to the present you will see

a range of painting practices and relationships. Wompi

all the styles and palettes she has explored.”

and Nungabar, senior Martu artists whose careers

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began before Whyoulter’s, were bound together by According to Sullivan, Whyoulter encouraged her

their parallel histories and the Country they shared, and

sister, Pinyirr Nancy Patterson, now deceased, to paint.

Whyoulter when she married Wompi’s son, “entered

“Pinyirr’s works are some of the best paintings any

into a circle of colorful kinship that would make an artist

Martu artist has painted and Bugai was instrumental in

of her.” But the formal development of Bugai has proven

her sister’s career,” Sullivan says. “They sat together

equally influential on Wompi and Nungabar, Carty says.

while they painted. Bugai was definitely the force that

“The three artists paint[ed] toward each other, and away

encouraged her sister to paint.”

from each other, but always in relationship to each other”. ³

For many years, Whyoulter, Wompi and Nungabar all lived together in a house in Kunawaritji. “These

Emerging Martumili artist Cyril Whyoulter, Bugai’s

three women, for a large amount of the time in Well

grandson, has collaborated with the senior Martu artist

33 all lived together in this big house with all of

on a series of recent works. “There’s a very strong

their beautiful dogs that they loved,” Sullivan recalls.

cultural tie between them and why they’re painting,

”A favourite memory I have of Wompi, Bugai and

why they’re telling those stories,” Sullivan says. “That

that “[p]assing on the knowledge of Country is an

telling it and sharing it for years. But I think every time she

integral part of being a senior Martu person, and

paints she’s in that place. She doesn’t need to physically

painting Country provides a forum in which elders

be there to go there.”

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its significance. You feel something. Bugai has been

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relationship is quite significant now”. Carty writes

can perform important acts of cultural transmission...

Collaboration is not simply about equal artists

Sullivan says some of Whyoulter’s distinctiveness is

working together, but about people at different

about her being prolific, “but it’s also about her seeking

stages of their lives, their careers and their education

enjoyment from painting.” Friend Nola Taylor has said

enabling each other to perform key aspects of their

Bugai has “got a lot happier since she’s been painting.

cultural roles and identities”. ⁴

She had a lot of sadness in her”. ⁵ Sullivan says everything Whyoulter does is of and about and completely connected to Country and culture and family. “But I think

of Wantili (Well 25 on the Canning Stock Route),

she’s somebody that really does enjoy the meditative

where the artist spent some of her early life. “Bugai

function of painting as well. It’s almost trancelike when

is at home across the region, although she hails

she paints. She just gets in there and she doesn’t stop.”

from Kunawarritji. She’s at home in Parnngurr, she’s at home in Newman. It doesn’t matter where she is

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Catalogue notes for Whyoulter’s inclusion in the Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards 2010 at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, p. 40.

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‘Kujungka-laju palyarnu (we did it together)’.

Essay by Anna Davis and Megan Robson for Martu Art from the Western Desert, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 2014, p. 20.

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‘You don’t go out in Country by yourself: Collaborative creativity in Martu art.’ Essay

by John Carty and Ngalangka Nola Taylor for Martu Art from the Western Desert, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 2014, pp. 33-34.

Country like Wantili with Bugai and Cyril and sit in that

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ibid, p. 33.

Country with them painting it is easier to understand

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Art Gallery of Western Australia, op. cit., p. 40.

and where she’s painting. But she has spoken about Wantili for as long as she has painted, probably much longer. I’d been to Wantili, as had others before with other people, but to go there with Bugai and Cyril together last year [2018] was quite significant for us and for them. She is a senior woman, a boss for that place, and she was so happy to be there and to show that place to everybody. When you go to

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Sullivan emphasises the significance for Whyoulter

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Parnngurr

2014 - Bugai Whyoulter

Historically and culturally Parnngurr was an important site for Aboriginal people during the pujiman (traditional, desert-dwelling) era. In the epic jukurrpa (dreamtime) story of the Jakulyukulyu, or Minyipuru (Seven Sisters), the sisters stop to rest on the adjacent Parnngurr

hill before continuing on their long journey east.

Throughout pujiman times, families stopped and camped here depending on the seasonal availability of water, and the corresponding cycles of plant and animal life on which hunting and gathering bush tucker was reliant. At Parnngurr and other similarly significant camp sites families would meet for a time before moving to their next destination.

Parnngurr is Bugai’s father’s Country, as well as her own ngurra (home Country). For Bugai, Parnngurr also signifies the location at which her nomadic bush life came to an end; it was here that she and her group were picked up by whitefellas to be taken to Jigalong Mission. Collectively the group had come to the decision to move to the mission as a result of an extended drought, which had caused a scarcity in food and water resources.

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Parnngurr is an Aboriginal community located 370km east of Newman, at the Southern end of the Karlimilyi area in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Created during the ‘Return to Country’ movement of the 1980s, with the recognition of Martu land rights and native title, the community was named after its original primary water source, a nearby rockhole and yinta (permanent water source). Until recently the community was widely known as Cotton Creek, after the European name for the ephemeral creek running alongside the community.

Parnngurr and its surrounds are physically dominated by distinctively red tali (sandhills), sparsely covered with spinifex and low lying shrub.

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Acrylic on canvas 92 x 92cm

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2011 - Bugai Whyoulter

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Acrylic on linen 91 x 91cm

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Wangkakarlu

Wangkakarlu is a claypan and special meeting place to the southeast of Parnngurr Aboriginal community. The landscape at Wangkakarlu is characterised by especially large tuwa (sandhills). Large numbers of ceremonies at this yinta (permanent water source). When the other claypans and yinta in the area overflow with water, the excess runoff collects here.

Bugai stayed around Wangkakalu with the Nampitjin family during pujiman times.

Speaking of the ‘quick one’ jila (snake) at Wangakalu, Bugai says that when visiting the site a fire must be lit to keep the snake that lives in the depths of the yinta from surfacing.

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Martu people would gather regularly for

Baskets

2014-19 - Bugai Whyoulter

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Minarri grass and wool Various dimensions

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Wantili One

2018 - Bugai Whyoulter Acrylic on linen 300 x 125cm

Published by: FORM building a state of creativity 39 Gugeri Street, Claremont, Western Australia, 6010 mail@form.net.au +61 8 9385 2200 Catalogue text by Kim Kirkman, Susan McCulloch, Andrew Nicholls, Mags Webster and Cyril Whyoulter.

Artwork stories edited by Ruth Leigh and Amy Mukherjee for Martumili Artists.

Bugai exhibition curated by Amy Mukherjee (Martumili Artists) and Andrew Nicholls (FORM), for FORM’s project space, The Goods Shed, Claremont, in 2019.

Designed by Ryan Stephenson.

Printed by Scott Print. © 2019. All rights reserved. Copyright for photographic images is held by Martumili Artists and the individual photographers. Copyright for written content in this publication is held by FORM or the individual writers. www.form.net.au www.martumili.com.au IBSN: 978-0-9944727-2-4 This book was conceived and written mostly on the lands of Nyoongar people, the traditional owners of Nyoongar Boodja. FORM respects and acknowledges all of Australia’s traditional owners, and their Elders past, present and emerging, and is grateful for the privilege of living and working on Nyoongar Country.

Exhibition initiated by FORM and Martumili Artists

Gallery Partner

Principal Partner

Government Support