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GUARDIAN SPIRIT
—Painting from the northern interior of Australia

‘I’m coming to you in this song,
Here I come still holding your law’
—Nyurapayia Nampitjinpa (Mrs Bennett), Punkillpiri 2009

Reflecting on the decade since the passing of Nyurapayia—along with many of her contemporaries from the late desert art movement—it is apparent to me that the paintings were created to transcend the purely aesthetic. Rather, they belong culturally and socially in a place far more important to us. No matter how beautiful the canvases are, the work of the artists is in fact a direct and unbroken communion …