Dallas Smythe

2019, burnt etching on plywood
40 x 40 cm
Cat No WB727-19

» ENQUIRE

Punu – Living Wood
Maruku Arts

Dallas Smythe is minyma Yarnangu, an Aboriginal woman from the Western Desert area of Australia. Born at Wiluna, she grew up in Warburton and now lives in Warakurna, all communities in the central desert region of Western Australia. Dallas is also an emerging artist with Tjanpi Desert Weavers. Her skills have been passed on through the Tjukurpa, the Law and way of life governing her country. She started working with walka boards a few years ago.

Walka is Desert design and inextricably linked with Tjukurpa: the Law and way of life of Anangu (Central and Western Desert Aboriginal people). The symbols were traditionally used in cave, ground and body paintings, in story telling, teaching and signalling inheritance.

This is ngura talitja or sand dune country. Series of curving lines are wind rippled sand dunes, sometimes intercut by the tracks of a Tjukuritja; the burrowings of animals; or the dry bed of a desert creek. By their very nature landforms mark sites related to the Creation Ancestors’ journeys across the country; the ‘dreaming tracks’ followed by countless generations of Anangu since. They created landforms and customs to be passed on and maintained over subsequent generations. The sites are linked through inma or ceremony - the singing, dancing and body painting which reveals the laws of nature and provides a blue print for life and a guiding map of country.

– MARUKU ARTS