Clarrie Djanghara, a native of the Kimberley region in north-western Australia, drew her inspiration for this painting from the ‘silhouettes’ of primitive divinities painted on the walls of sacred caves in prehistoric times.

The Gwion figures come from rock paintings in the north-western Kimberley region of Western Australia, spread over around 100,000 sites covering an area of 50,000 square kilometres. They are thought to be at least 17,000 and possibly more than 25,000 years old (compared with the famous Egyptian hieroglyphs, which are barely 5,000 years old). 

In this work, Clarrie Djanghara evokes a gathering of Gwion Gwion. Some of them are armed with arrows or spear-thrusters. The artist plays on the unevenness of the support to inlay her figures in space: seated or moving.