Piltati Nya

MEGAN Lyons came to the Collective Art Centre, Adelaide, in 2023, and paints Piltati, the story of the watersnake, a dreaming she inherited from her father's mother's side.

Her grandfather was the celebrated Tiger Palpatja, while her father Sammy Lyons was a respected senior man and artist at Tjala Arts in Amata.

She often paints in collaboration with her Mum Kukika Adamson and on this occasion with Tanya Tiger. This Piltati story is a vivid and codified story from her country, of men sending women out to hunt and then deciding to become water snakes and inhabit the Piltati, the big waterhole.

Looking for their men, the women grew thirsty and followed a track made by a small snake, one suitable to catch and eat. The snake was much bigger than they thought but still they managed to stab it. In this horror the older brother rose up in defiance, chased the women and caught them.

Megan has told the story in the past of how her great grandmother was pregnant and travelling west. She needed to stop and her family took her to the cave at Piltati where her grandfather was born. That is how her family became part of that country's story and why she paints Piltati.