Liyawaday Wirrpanda

(born 1973)

Bunba, 2009

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Buku-Larrngay Mulka, Yirrkala (label and documentation attached verso, cat. 3601A)
Annandale Galleries, Sydney (label attached verso, cat. BLA 607)
The Sarick Collection, Canada

EXHIBITED
Djambawa Marawili - Liyawaday Wirrpanda - Nawarapu Wunungmurra: New Works, Annandale Galleries, Sydney, 16 March - 30 April 2011

The Buku-Larrngay Mulka documentation attached verso reads:

'Liyawaday is the daughter of artists Dhukal Wirpanda and Galuma Maymur and third wife of Djambawa Marawili. She has painted her Dhudi-Djapu clans design of country that was transformed by the principal creator beings for the Dhuwa moiety - the Djan kawu.

They passed through the plains country of Yalata towards where the Dhudi-Djapu live today at Dhuruputipi.

These the Djan'kawu, two Sisters with names in this country of Ganaypa and Banyali, sang the brolga Dhangultji as they went with their walking sticks - Wapitja. With these they dug waterholes as they went, naming, thus sanctifying them with special qualities. Today they retain these same qualities for the Yolnu, the water and knowledge that surfaces from these wells by their actions are sung in ceremony for this country.

The sacred clan design throughout this painting declares ownership of this country from Yalata to Dhuruputipi for the Dhudi-Diapu. The ribbons of red, white and yellow hatching refer to the freshwater that flows from the water holes of this area that is aflood during the wet.

This work on one hand can depict a hunting idyll. Central to the work is one of the Valata waterholes over which brolga are soaring. A family is out hunting.

On the other hand Liyawaday has incorporated a story of grave menace, her husband Djambawa tells;

A Dhudi-Djapu family was living at Garrangali. The man and his wife had 5 daughters, they were all beautiful. The parents went hunting one day for stingray at Bulkawuy leaving their daughters behind. Then there was the Gurrutidjurr lurking, he thought he would go and join with those young girls and started to make jokes with them.

He wanted them to run a race to see who was the fastest. The course was set and Gurritidiurr set them off. The course had the girls run out then around past where Gurritidjurr lay in wait. The eldest of the sisters was the fastest and the one he felt keenest towards. He grabbed her as she ran past and bundled her of to his place which was over the other side from Garrangali at Garrawadwuy. Here he kept her locked up.

The remaining girls told their father on his return that their sister was taken by Nyela (Gurrutidjurr's other name) to his camp. The father was outraged and started a ceremony to bring his daughter back - a powerful performance intoning her name and willing her to turn into a butterfly (Bonba).

So she did and was able to escape through the small cracks of her confinement and fly back like an angle, with beautiful face and wings of a butterfly to her family.

At the far right of this work the daughter is seen in her confinement at Garrawadwuy growing wings, then escaped flying towards her father and family.'