Angilyiya Tjapiti Mitchell

This painting is of a popular tjukurrpa story of seven sisters being chased through the desert by one cheeky, lusty man, Wati Nyiru. Many things happen to these women as they travel through country. Eventually they rise up into the sky and form the Peliades, a group of seven stars seen in the southern skies. This painting takes place at Kurualya, a sacred place for women in Angilyiya’s mother’s country south of Papulankutja Blackstone. Wati Nyiru was following them, disguising himself as a quandong tree, and then a yirli fig, and then a carpet snake, spying on them as they made camp, building wiltjas and wind breaks and digging for food.