Collection: The Seven Sisters

These paintings depict the Tjukurpa: the Law and the stories of Ancestors.

Anangu (Central and Western Desert Aboriginal people) have responsibilities for the protection and teaching of different Tjukurpa and there are strict protocols for the imparting of knowledge. The doing technique has evolved with the need to adapt sacred expressions of Tjukurpa for public viewing and as a depiction of the desert landscape.

Kungkarangkalpa is the Tjukurpa of the Seven Sisters, concerning a group of women being pursued by a cunning man called Nyiru who attempts to lure them into marriage with him.

He disguises himself in countless ways to trick the sisters and is sometimes also invisible in paintings. In their escape, the sisters traveled through a vast amount of Australia. They stopped to camp, build shelters and hunt for food, thus forming many features of the landscape and embedding the knowledge of survival in it.

Eventually, they fled into the sky where they became the constellation known as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters. Nyiru still follows them ceaselessly across the night sky as one of the bright stars in the constellation of Orion.