
Piltati
Through the concentric circles of this ceramic and the paths radiating out from their contours, we can understand the story of the time of the Piltati dream:Two brothers and two sisters had married and were living together in Piltati. One day, the wives went for a walk and walked so far that they forgot their husbands who had stayed in the camp. The husbands were worried about their wives' absence and decided to go and look for them. To save time, they transformed themselves into rainbow snakes and were able to rise into the sky to find them and join them. That's when they spotted them hunting carpet snakes on land. In the first hole they dug, the men threw an object that the women found. Seeing that the ruse worked particularly well, they repeated the operation in the holes dug by the women during their hunting sessions. In this way, the Piltati men lured the women back to their camp and had them transformed into water snakes (wanampi) as a punishment. So they were able to swallow them and keep them in their throats. They lived together in the local watering hole until today.
Tjimpuna Williams hails from Ernabella, where she trained in a number of media, including painting, linocut, batik and her medium of choice: ceramics.
In 2012, she was named a finalist in the Indigenous Ceramic Art Awards at the Shepparton Art Museum in Victoria. Tjimpuna Williams uses traditional motifs linked to stone holes (tjukula) or sand dunes (tali), and also paints dreams associated with her mother's country - Piltati, near Kanpi in the APY lands. Her designs are inspired by batik motifs and ceremonial forms.
In 2011, Tjimpuna Williams' ceramics were the subject of a group exhibition at the South Australian Museum, Adelaide.
Collections :
- National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
- Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
- Museum of Ethnology, Osaka