We stayed at the young men's bush camp. Later when our beards had grown, we got up and went to our mothers, and grandmothers. Only when you had stayed there and become a mature man could you come back into the main camp.
MICK NAMARARI TJAPALTJARRI

In Australian desert societies, the designs associated with ceremonies are secret. Early painters at Papunya were challenged to present the power of their ancestral designs without disclosing certain ceremonial knowledge. After some of these protocols were breached, Geoffrey Bardon asked the men to paint “Children’s Stories” without ceremonial content. Much to the perplexity of many scholars, the paintings titled this way often contain significant ceremonial information and it was assumed that the artist chose that title when wanting to deflect attention from the painting’s ceremonial references. Research for this exhibition has suggested, however, that some artists might have thought Bardon was asking them to paint stories about children.

This painting may refer to Kutungu, an ancestral woman who traveled eastward from “where the sun goes down” to Muruntji. She fell asleep and one of two boys raped her while she slept. When she awoke she realized what had happened, tracked the boys, killed them with her digging stick, cooked and ate them. As she crawled away, she vomited, leaving a mark in the land, and turned into a watersnake.