Sandhills of Mina Mina - ‘Karntakurlangu Jukurrpa’ (Women’s Dreaming) screenprint by Dorothy Napangardi

Catalogue No: DN-7.2, Limited Edition: 99, Image Size: 72.5 x 75.5 cm, Paper & size: Arches Cover, 98 x 80 cm, Medium Screenprint Produced: Silkscreen painted by Dorothy Napangardi at Northern Editions, Northern Territory University in June 2002, Edition sequence: 2 colours – black and white, Printer: Simon White, Northern Editions, NTU, Publisher: Gallery Gondwana

In this work Dorothy using a myriad of white dots set against a black background creating a shifting sea of wonderfully harmonious movement that gathers and disperses across the paper. Like the sandhills in constant flux around and through the artist’s country so too does this screen print move, backwards and forwards, the rippling effect produced so like that of the wind’s tracks in the sand.

It depicts a major women’s ceremonial site known as Mina Mina, the artist’s custodial country, located near Lake Mackay in the Tanami Desert, north of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory. During the Jukurrpa Ancestral women of the Napangardi and Napanangka sub-section groups (aunt / niece relationship, in which knowledge is passed from one to the other) gathered to collect ceremonial digging sticks ( karlangu ) that had emerged from the ground. They then proceeded east, performing rituals of song and dance, to the place known as Jankinyi. A large belt of trees ( Allocasuarina decaisneana ) now stand where these digging sticks once were.