Marlarri-My Country

Lucy Loomoo

Lucy Loomoo painted the waterholes and country around her birthplace at Kirriwirri, in the southern region of the Great Sandy Desert. This area is dominated by a long series of salt lakes, the Percival Lakes, which stretch for hundreds of kilometres across the desert.

Amongst these vast salt lakes are small sources of fresh water (jila), that are known to the local custodians and are critical to supporting life in this part of the desert. Lucy Loomoo maintained a mental map of the region, reciting the series of names of waterholes that, taken together, form the pathway for the movement of people and animals across the desert country. As custodians and traditional owners of this country, Lucy’s clan had an intimate knowledge of this country and its resources. As an artist Lucy Loomoo continued to access this knowledge as the underlying subject of her work, representing the country and its sandhill structures, the waterholes and the bush foods that her people harvested in season.

Long after her people migrated north to the settlements around the Kimberley region, Lucy maintained a deep connection to her ancestral lands and the life her family group had lived there for millennia.