Kuruwarri : Yuendumu doors

Canberra : Aboriginal Studies Press, 1987. First edition. Small quarto, illlustrated laminated card covers (light handling marks, price sticker to lower panel), 143 pp, illustrated in colour and black and white.

In 1982, in the small township of Yuendumu nearly 300 kilometres northeast of Alice Sprints, five Walpiri elders painted 30 doors of the local primary school with ancient designs known as kuruwarri in order to educate the local children about their culture, laws and heritage, known as the Dreamtime. The five men who painted the doors were Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson, Roy Jupurrurla Curtis, Paddy Japaljarri Stewart, Paddy Japaljarri Sims, and Larry Jungarrayi Spencer. Supplied with acrylic paints by the school principal, these ancestral images which had traditionally been drawn into the sand and drifted away, were recorded with permanency in paint, and represent the origins of the Warlpiri art movement.