PANTJITI LIONEL - MALARA
Exhibit July-August 2017
"My birthplace is my father's place (ngura); a very important sacred place; a big place east of Kanpi. My mother, like Ungakini's father, came from Ngaatatjara lands in Western Australia. When the family moved to Ernabella mission I was not yet an adolescent girl. After school hours I would go to the craft room. It was a small shed then. I did not learn weaving but but was spinning wool on the outside while the other relatives were dying it. I also knitted jumpers. I did not paint on canvas, but made floor rugs with colourful patterns. During that time we were all living in shelters (wiltja) made from spinifex (tjanpi) and shifted camp regularly in a circle around the mission compound. Our homes were very clean. Amata, Fregon, Finke, Mimili and Indulkana did not exist then but there was Alice Springs, Areyonga and Haast's Bluff where rations were handed out. After my brief work experience in the hospital, I began to cook large meals, the rations in the mission kitchen. The present Art Centre is an expansion of that building." (Conversation with Dr Ute Eickelkamp, January 2003 at Ernabella.)
