Art Communities

Lajamanu’s history as an Aboriginal settlement goes back to 1949, when several hundred Warlpiri people were taken by truck from Yuendumu to Catfish waterhole – 600km north across the inhospitable Tanami Desert. The Federal Government was concerned that outbreaks of disease would occur unless the population was limited at Yuendumu. The new settlement was located in the ‘buffer zone’ between traditional territories of the Warlpiri and Gurindji people.

Unable to live away from close relatives and their Dreaming sites of spiritual power, many people walked back to Yuendumu. These ‘walk backs’ occurred in 1958 and 1968, before residents were finally prepared to accept the Hooker Creek community. In the end they stayed and established a strong community, which for many years was resistant to joining in the wider Desert painting movement. Lajamanu artists finally started painting on permanent surfaces in late 1986. Prior to this time their symbolic icons appeared only on sand ceremonial paintings. It was considered sacrosanct to place Warlpiri icons in a permanent frame of reference.

Lajamanu is now home to some 700 Warlpiri people. It holds a strong sense of cultural identity, helped by the settlement’s remoteness, its linguistic stability and its own Aboriginal council.

Through art, jukurrpa (the Dreaming of the ancestral heroic past) moves into the present and remains alive and strong in both women and men’s art work. Through the Dreaming, Aboriginal men and women and nature came to be as they are – eternally interconnected with their totemic ancestors. This concept is not confined to a mythical past but carried forward into the present and a future living reality.

Over the years, Lajamanu artists have built up impressive individual reputations despite the difficulties in promoting their work. Collectively they have forged for Lajamanu painting its own distinctive identity

Judy Martin

Peggy Rockman

Artist at work	Lajamanu Artists