George Tjungurrayi Untitled

This painting relates to the claypan site known as Mamultjjulkulnga, on the edge of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) in Western Australia. This site is of great importance to me as it is where my father passed away.

After rain, this claypan becomes a large shallow freshwater lake, which provides ideal conditions for the fleshy shrub known in Pintupi as mungilya. In ancestral times, two Tingari men of the Tjungurrayi and Tjapaltjarri kinship groups camped at this site. They gathered the seeds from Mungilya which, when ground into a paste, is roasted in the campfire coals to produce a type of unleavened bread.

George Tjungurrayi, 2020