Elizabeth Dunn Piltati, 2024 Ernabella Arts

Medium: Acrylic on Canvas Size: 100 x 150 cm ID: #487-24
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    About this artwork

    There were two sisters who married two brothers and they all lived together. One day the women went wandering and they went such a long way that they forgot about their husbands. Back at the camp, the two husbands were thinking, ‘Where are our wives?’ and they decided to go looking for them. One brother said to the other, ‘What should we become to go looking for them?’ and the other brother said ‘Why don’t we become Rainbow Serpents?’ And they travelled in the sky looking down for their wives. Finally they see them hunting for carpet snakes and they put something in the hole where the women were digging. The women find it and then dig another hole and once again the men have put something in there. And this is how the men lure the women back to Piltati where the men make the sisters transform into Wanampi, swallow them and keep .them in their throats. All four of them live together in the waterhole and still live there today.

    About Elizabeth Dunn

    Elizabeth was born in Ernabella in 1973. She went to high school in Adelaide before returning home. She spent her childhood watching her elders paint and now depicts her grandmothers country, a place named Piltati near Nyapari, on canvas and ceramics. She also depicts stories relating to Kampurara - Bush Tomatoes. She is also a talented Tjanpi weaver and jeweller. She first began painting at Papunya Tjupi Arts in Papunya community. In August 2016 Elizabeth's ceramic work was exhibited alongside seven other Ernabella women in a collaborative ceramics installation as part of the Indigenous Ceramics Art Award at the Shepparton Art Museum and subsequently acquired by the National Museum of Australia.