Kathryn Queama - The Seven Sisters (X2040-19)

Artist: Kathryn Queama

Title: ‘Kungkarangkalpa – The Seven Sisters’

Cat no: X2040-19

Size: 80 x 30 cm 

Story:

This painting depicts the Tjukurpa, the law and stories of Ancestors.  Anangu (Central and Western Desert Aboriginal people) have responsibility for the protection and teaching of different Tjukurpa and there are stick protocols for the imparting of knowledge.  The dotting technique has evolved with the need to adapt sacred expressions of Tjukurpa for public viewing and as a depiction of the desert landscape.

Kungkarangkalpa is the Tjukurpa of the Seven Sisters, about a group of women being pursued by a cunning man called Nyiru who attempts to lure them into marriage with him.  He disguises himself in countless ways to trick the sisters and is sometimes is also invisible in paintings.

In their escape the sisters travelled through a vast amount of Australia.  They stopped to camp, build shelter and hunt for food thus forming many features of the landscape and embedding the knowledge of survival in it.  Eventually they fled into the sky where they became the constellation known as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters.  Nyiru still follows them ceaselessly across the night sky as one of the bright stars in the constellation of Orion.