Grandmother's country by Marie Napurulla, 68x108cm 14236MR

This expansive painting offers another meditation on ancestral movement across Luritja Country, told through Marie Napurrula’s personal family history. The work traces the ceremonial routes travelled by her grandmother’s family, journeys once undertaken with two camels as they moved between important sites to attend ceremony, renew kinship ties, and maintain Law. Concentric circles punctuate the composition, marking places of gathering, water, and rest along the long road between Uluru and Kings Canyon, passing through Areyonga and Jay Creek before reaching Hermannsburg (Ntaria).

At the heart of the painting is Marie’s great-grandmother, Imbana, a traditional bush woman born at Tempe Downs. A senior woman of the Luritja language group, her Country lies around Kings Canyon and the Mereenie Loop. Imbana’s daughter—Marie’s grandmother—was taken from her father at Jay Creek at just nine years of age as part of the Stolen Generations. Raised away from her family and language, she carried the trauma of separation throughout her life.

Born on 19 September 1967 in Waratah, New South Wales, Marie later returned to Alice Springs to reconnect with the cultural knowledge interrupted before her birth. Through painting, she rebuilds these fractured pathways, teaching her seven children the traditions, stories, and responsibilities of their Country.

In Grandmother’s Country, painting becomes an act of quiet repair. By re-mapping these ancestral journeys across the desert, Marie restores memory to the land, offering healing to her grandmother’s spirit while reaffirming her own enduring connection to Country.