Rene Sundown Australian, Yankunytjatjara, b. 1952

Rene Sundown was born near Mt Ebenezer NT and Rene and her siblings were raised in bushland there by their mother. Rene’s father worked as a stockman at nearby cattle stations and Rene and her siblings soon took on work at the Erldunda Station. As a young woman, Rene settled in the newly established Indulkana Community and worked at the preschool.

Rene and her husband Hughie Cullinan now live at Amaroona, a homelands near the Indulkana Community, where they manage the land and maintain Anangu cultural practices like cultivating bush foods and Hughie crafts kulata (traditionally made wooden spears). Rene and Hughie work with the Indulkana Anangu School to organise regular cultural trips for school students to visit Amaroona.

Rene commenced painting at Iwantja Arts in 2000 and is a respected senior woman and a long-serving director of the Art Centre. Rene paints the country where she lives, Amaroona, utilizing a pared-back palette and subtle shifts in colour to depict its sites of cultural significance and important rock-holes and water-sources.

“I was born in country along the way to Uluru. My father was a stockman and my mother was a teacher to me and my brothers. When the rain would come we used to go hunting for rabbit and malu (kangaroo) with my father. He was always catching echidnas and we used to pull out all the sharp ends and cook them on the fire. A salty creek used to run near to Erldunda Station and me and my brothers always wanted to be swimming there. I live at the Homelands now with my husband, we enjoy watering the plants and living in the country, it’s a good place. It’s important to know about family and to grow up children on these lands, then we can remember this country and where we come from."