Features:
- 100% silk
- Artist and story information card
- Beautifully presented in gift box
- Royalties paid to the artist/family on every sale
Artist: Rosie Tarku King
Art Centre: Mangkaja Arts
Community: Fitzroy Crossing, WA
Language: Juwaliny, Walmajarri
In this work, Rosie Tarku King brings to life the complex ecosystem of her desert homelands in an intimately detailed map of her Country.
Vibrant reds and pinks radiate with the heat of desert and are tempered by blue circles demarking jila (living waterholes) and jumu (soakages) – vital life-giving water sources. The salt lakes of the area are rendered in peach and encircled with a faint blue line tracing their receding waters, while red sand dunes writhe in various shades of pink.
Tarku King describes the work ‘You can see salt lakes dry without water, some jilas and little billabongs with water, sand hills, red sands, dry grass and trees.’
I was born at a jumu (soak water) called Payinjarra in the Great Sandy Desert. I walked out from the desert when I was young. I left my mother and brother, Peter Skipper behind at Japirnka. I left with my husband, I was a young girl. My husband had two wives, me and my older sister. These two passed away a long time ago.
When we left the desert we walked for a long time, it was a long way. We were walking and hunting. We killed pussycat and wirlka (sand goanna) but no kangaroo. We killed them to eat. I was walking, all the time worrying about my mother but I kept going.
I came out at Old Bililuna. There were planes landing right there, I was frightened of that plane. From there all of us kids went walking and looking at the plane that had landed. We were looking at it. I didn’t know any English; I just looked at the kartiya (Europeans). We kept coming and we saw kartiya getting water in a bucket from the well. This was new to me too; it was the first time I had seen this. We had no shoes; we were wearing yakapiri (bush used to make sandals to protect feet from hot ground). I talked only Juwaliny when I came; today I speak Juwaliny, Walmajarri, Kriol and English.
After that, a motor car came from Moola Boola to Old Bililluna and took us to Moola Boola. We came out there, frightened in the car, we hadn’t seen one before. We didn’t know anyone there either. I met Daisy Andrews there, she had her first son, and I met her there with her son. I didn’t know her before then. They put dresses on us, we came no clothes.
Provenance:
Manufactured by One of Twelve – an Australian company that showcases the work of emerging and established artists from the Asia Pacific region. We are dedicated to celebrating and contributing to the art sector of this region through the production of high quality, silk garments that depict collaborating artists work.
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