ROMA BUTLER NYUTJANGKA, Walpa, 2005

ROMA BUTLER NYUTJANGKA Pitjantjatjara language, born 1959 Walpa, 2005 acrylic on canvas 95 x 137.5 cm bears inscription verso: Roma Butler, IRR05126; Deutscher and Hackett label adhered verso PROVENANCE Irrunytju Arts Centre, Western Australia, Cat No. IRR05126 Aboriginal and Pacific Art, New South Wales Private Collection, New South Wales Deutscher and Hackett, Aboriginal + Oceanic Art, Melbourne, 14 October 2009, Lot 151 The Collection of Barbara Hansen, Victoria Accompanied by certificates of authenticity from Irrunytju Arts Centre and Aboriginal and Pacific Art Roma Nyutjangka Butler was born in 1959 at Wilu rockhole, along the kanyala (euro) Tjukurrpa track. She spent her early years at Ernabella Mission in South Australia before travelling by camel to Warburton in Western Australia, where she attended school. Irrunytju is Butler's home and the Country of her grandfather's brother. Alongside her painting practice, she has worked with Ngaanyatjarra Media, filming documentaries about culture and translating stories. She has also presented a daily radio broadcast of Anangu music with her husband. The Minyma Kutjara Tjukurpa (Two Women Creation Story) is of particular importance at Irrunytju and is central to this painting. The story follows two sisters whose travels across Country can be traced through the desert, their journeys, actions and resting places associated with significant landmarks. In this painting, the two sisters sit on hills near Irrunytju, weaving string belts in preparation for secret women's business. As they weave, they sit with their legs open, an indiscreet posture. A woman passing by sees them and begins to laugh, and soon all three women are laughing together. Butler translates this episode into a richly patterned composition, using repeated forms, rhythmic lines and areas of colour to evoke the women, the surrounding hills and their movement through Country. The repetition across the surface creates a sense of both landscape and narrative, as though different moments in the sisters' journey are held together within a single image. Irrunytju rockhole is also connected to the sisters, who created the water source when they threw their wana (digging sticks). Across the painting, pathways and clustered forms suggest the interconnectedness of water, land and the places shaped by the sisters as they travelled. Rather than presenting Country as a fixed landscape, Butler's composition conveys it as a living network of places, stories and ancestral actions. © Roma Butler Nyutjangka / Copyright Agency, 2026

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