Bugai Whyoulter is a Kartujarra woman and a senior custodian of the lands surrounding Kunawarritji (Canning Stock Route, Well 33) in remote Western Australia. Born in the 1940s at Pukayiyirna, she travelled northward with her parents toward Kunawarritji. In 1963 Bugai’s family encountered surveyor Len Beadell, who was grading roads for the Woomera Missile Testing Range. From the flour he provided, Bugai taught her relatives how to cook a simple damper (flat bread), a skill acquired from drovers she encountered on the Canning Stock Route. Shortly afterward Bugai, her husband, and her extended family moved to Jigalong Mission. There, they were reunited with many relatives that had already escaped the desert due to a prolonged and severe drought. They were some of the last Martu to leave the desert.

Timeless winds carry ancient songs across the salt and sand of Bugais home, songs that remind and reinforce whose country this is. Painted directly after Bugais return to Wantili, a large lyinji (clay pan) close to Bugai’s birthplace, this exhibition concentrates on works produced between 2019 and 2022. The paintings, starkly monochromatic, channel song memories into soft tonal gestures redolent of the salt plains of her Ngura. They are shimmering shadows of her vast country and, like the alchemists of old, turn sand into song and country into canvas. Bugai is country, Bugai is song and Bugai is Martu: Ngayu Bugai - I AM BUGAI.

In 2021, Bugai’s work Wantili won the general painting category at the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards and was selected in 2019, 2018 and 2013 for the same award. In 2012 her work was selected for the Bankwest Contemporary Art Prize and Hedland Art Award, and in 2010, the Western Australian Indigenous Art Award. She has held regular solo exhibitions, and her work has been acquired by several major institutions in Australia, including The National Museum of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, and Queensland Art Gallery’s Gallery of Modern Art.

Proudly held in association with Martumili Artists the exhibition opens on August 10 at 3pm and concludes September 1.
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