Alison Munti Riley b. 1966

In this painting,
Alison has combined two stories - Kungka Kutjara (Two Women) and Wangunu
(Bush Damper Seed). There
are many variations of the significant Kungka Kutjara Dreaming story, as it is
an extensive songline that crosses many different language groups. Alison
paints the story she knows, with two women who were sisters, travelling across
the desert from Western Australia to South Australia. They
travelled through sandhills and various desert country, camping as they
travelled. When they arrived in Alison’s ancestral country, all the trees were
dry, and there wasn't much bush tucker to be found. Life was very hard. As much
as the younger sister wanted to return to where she was born, she obeyed her
older sister, but always yearned for her own country.

This painting also depicts a Wangunu (Bush
Damper Seed) story. Alison depicts the country she knows so intimately, the
precious water sources around which medicinal botanicals and nutritious bush
foods, like bush damper, grow in abundance. She paints the way bush damper seeds
are collected by women, are ground and shaken in a piti (coolamon, or a carved
wooden bowl) to make a flour from which damper, a bread-like tucker, is made.