A wonderful article by Nicholas Rothwell about Wingu Tingima:
For who, among the legions of keen collectors tracking the most admired Aboriginal art star of the western desert, Wingu Tingima, knows anything about her life and the way her mythscapes shape her days? Who hears about her intense, prophetic dreams or the way they become real, and dream beings come thrusting into the fabric of her world?
Wingu, 80, bird-like in her manner, hard of hearing and self-possessed, has been living in recent months at the tiny desert community of Irrunytju, close to Surveyor General’s Corner, the point where the frontiers of Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory meet.
The settlement lies amid the scrub and spinifex, in the lee of low ranges: a scatter of houses, an airstrip, a school and store. Beside its tranquil workshop buildings, wild camels graze undisturbed. On the red-sand roadways, camp dogs patrol, children play, and ancient Toyotas, in various states of disrepair, await.
It was death that brought Wingu back to this old haunt of hers: nightmares, death and strong convictions about the spirit world. At the ramshackle Irrunytju art centre, surrounded by several bright-coloured canvases in mid-composition, she tells the tale, while her son, Winmati Roberts, a man of good looks and charm, sits close by, listening, intent.
