Joshua Jungarrayi Brady / The Seven Sisters – APY Jukurrpa (2044-21ny)

Artwork is accompanied by Warlukurlangu Artists (Yuendumu) Art Centre Certificate of Authenticity/Provenance

I want my art seen so other people can look, learn and understand the importance of our Dreaming. We need to keep our culture strong.

Joshua Jungarrayi Brady was born in 1970 in Hawker, SA, a small town located in the Flinders Ranges. His mother and father live in the remote Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjajara (APY) Lands in South Australia, 40 km south of the Northern Territory. His mother, Yilpi Adamson Brady, is an accomplished Anangu/Pitjatjantjara batik artist, and painter residing in Pukatja community and his father, Lee Brady, is an Amata Community Leader. His grandparents, now passed away, were victims of the Maralinga testing and radioactive fallout. He has two sisters.

Joshua attended school in Adelaide and later studied at Woodville Art School, SA. Since leaving school, he has held positions in several government departments, including the SA Police and the SA Health Services, all based in the Aboriginal APY land communities. He is married and has recently relocated to Nyirripi, a remote aboriginal community located 150km south west of Yuendumu in the NT of Australia.

Joshua has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu, since early 2021. His interest in art was re-ignited when he discovered there was an art centre in Nyrripi. He paints his Father’s and Grandfather’s Jukurrpa, The Seven Sisters – Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjata Jukurrpa, stories related directly to his land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it and the Dreaming Creation Law strongly held by the Aboriginal people. These stories have been passed down to him by his parents and their parents before them for millennial.

Joshua is married and has one son.

Pleiades, The Seven Sisters Constellation, can be seen worldwide, and stories about The Seven Sisters resonate from far and wide, not just one story, but many versions crisscrossing continents, varying in each language group and country. It’s a special story.

For the Anangu Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara lands, Inawinytji Williamson, senior law woman and traditional owner of The Seven Sisters Songline, said, “Dreaming creation law is strongly held and it’s important to teach future generations about it.”

To the Aboriginal people it is a tale of flight and pursuit as the sisters (Ancestral Women) flee from Wati Nyiru’s (an Ancestral Being) advances. The sisters travel over land and sky from Western Australia into the APY lands, and later into Warlpiri country, where the sisters become the Napaljarri-warnu. But … Wati Nyiru is forever lying in wait, sometimes capturing a sister or two, sometimes tricking them, and always spying on them. It is a dramatic tale of creation, lust and love, flight and survival, passion and danger.

The Seven Sisters – Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara story/songline begins from Irawa Bore in the north and zigzags its way south to Alkara in South Australia. Along the way the sisters stop at various sites but Wati Nyiru is forever behind them or waiting for them. They see Nyiru spying on them at Atila, a flat-topped mountain (Mount Conner). The sisters flee south and stop at Wiapula waterhole where they sing and splash, but Nyiru soon appears. The sisters disappear underground and follow the subterranean waterways, coming to the top at No. 3 Bore. Nyiru is there! They hurry south, past Mulga Park to Walinynga, where they build a spinifex shelter known today as Cave Hill. Nyiru is there! He seals the entrance to stop them from escaping. They dig a small opening at the rear with their coolamons, and whirl southwards past Kuli into other lands. Nyiru always close-by.