Seven Sisters (TM)

Size: 85 x 200cm

Orientation: Landscape

The Artist: Teresa Mula

The Story: Seven Sisters is one of the most widely distributed stories amongst Aboriginal Australia spanning from the central desert out to the west coast. The story line travels through many different language groups and different sections of the narrative are recognised in different parts of the country. Throughout all the variations of the story, the theme remains constant. It is a story of a forbidden pursuit and a daring escape, desire, magic and family bonds.

Long ago in the Dreaming there were seven sisters who were foraging for food in the bush when they came across two hunters from a different skin group. They invited the men to share their food and drink but gradually realized that they had more amorous intentions. The sisters, who did not want to break the traditional laws that forbade romantic relationships with other skin groups, fled their camp with the men in hot pursuit. The Ancestral Spirits, who saw what was happening, saved the sisters’ honour by lifting them into the sky where they assumed the form of the stars that we know as the Pleiades. Now at night in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, you can see the Seven Sisters fleeing across the sky, still pursued but never to be caught by the two hunters.