What is Bush Plum Dreaming? | Aboriginal Art Explained
Bush Plum Dreaming celebrates one of the important bush foods of Central Australia. In the Utopia homelands the bush plum is often called Anwekety (also spelt Arnwekety), and it is one of the most familiar stories in the region's painting.
The Story
The bush plum is a small native fruit that grows across the desert country north-east of Alice Springs, and the story of the plant spreads right across the western and central deserts. In one Utopia telling, winds blew from all directions in the Dreaming, carrying the bush plum seed to the artists' ancestral lands. The first plant grew and fruited there, and its seeds were carried by the wind across country.
The bush plum is an important food source, and Aboriginal people honour the plant through ceremony, song and dance, and through painting, to help ensure it keeps fruiting each season.
The Paintings
Bush Plum paintings work on several levels at once. The dots and patterns represent the fruit, leaves and flowers of the plant, and also the body paint designs associated with it in ceremony. Artists build up dense fields of dots, often in many layers, so the surface shimmers with colour.
Utopia painting came to international attention through artists such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye, and the bush plum remains a subject painted across many Utopia families today.
Bush Plum Artists at Art by Farquhar
Artists painting Bush Plum at Art by Farquhar include Polly Ngale, an Anmatyerre artist from Utopia, along with June Bird Ngale, Bessie Pitjara, Roseanne Morton Petyarre, Gracie Morton Pwerle and Stephen Martin Pitjara.
To learn more, read our guides to the Dreaming and Aboriginal dot painting.
Browse Bush Plum paintings from our artists in one collection.
Art by Farquhar is a member of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia.