Timo Hogan: Lake Baker 2018

Timo has depicted Lake Baker a significant site situated to the northwest of the traditional Spinifex Lands on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert in Western Australia. He shares custodial responsibilities with his father for this place. It is a large salt pan that holds the important Wati Kutjara Tjukurpa (the Two Serpent Men Tjukurpa) and involves two ancestral beings who shape the landscape as they move through it. At Lake Baker one man resides in the rock hole as a wanampi (water serpent) while the other is some distance off. The wanampi was sleeping underground in the lake before he rises up and out through the rock hole and travels through country. The rock hole at Lake Baker is dangerous and is a 'Men Only' site where certain ceremonial protocols must be observed. Timo talks of a bathing ritual that must be performed to appease the Wanampi before one can continue through the nearby country.

Tjukurpa is the Pitjantjatjara concept for describing the formative creation where ancestral beings create the world. These beings are Anangu ancestors, who can take the form of people, plants or animals. They traverse the country; forming the world we live in, creating the waterholes, the trees, the clay pans, the rocky outcrops, the sand hills and the Spinifex plains. These land formations are the physical manifestation of the creation energy and tangible evidence that this Tjukurpa is true.