Papuun

Katjarra Butler has been painting since the mid-1990s and is known for her dynamic and colourful paintings of Country. She works through Tjarlirli Art, an art centre representing artists of Tjukurla in the Ngaanyatjarra lands of Western Australia and Kaltukatjara in the Northern Territory. Many of the artists working through Tjarlirli Art have familial connections with artists working through Papunya Tula Artists.

Katjarra Butler is an Elder at Tjarlirli and in her painting she has represented Papuun, a site in the remote Gibson Desert of Western Australia, including its four rock holes, one of which is very large. Butler remembers swimming there during ‘the hot times’ with her family. This is Butler’s Country, which she grew up traversing by foot.

Papuun means ‘to fan smoke with your hands’ and references the tjukurrpa of this site. Here, a woman named Kutungu, who was travelling from the south-west, trapped a pack of dogs in one of the rock holes by enclosing the entrance with dirt. Kutungu lit a fire to smoke out the dogs, fanning it into the burrow with her hands. When they came out, the dogs were dizzy and sick, and Kutungu hunted and feasted on them, before she continued her journey westward.

This work was a finalist in the 2023 Wynne Prize.