• Women’s Dreaming
  • Women’s Dreaming

Judy Nambia Martin

Women’s Dreaming

  

  • Synthetic Polymer Paint on Canvas, stretched 
  • 800mm x 300mm
  • Cat No. 528-23

This dreaming tells about women’s ceremony. It affirms womens place in Warlpiri
society. The Dreaming story marks large tracks of land of which women are guardian over. Particular men are workers for the women. They are called kurdungurlu. This works in reverse as well, where the particular women work for particular men. Only the women know this dreaming. It talks about travelling from north to south, west to east into the new sun signifying a new day and new life. They teaching all the young kids. They all teach people from different skin groups, so that the dreamings are passed along to the young children.

Napangardi was born on her lands around 1939. These were the lands of her father and grandfathers. Her other Dreaming sites are Minamina near Lake Mackay. Her father Japanangka passed away shortly after she was born. He passed away in his lands. Her Mother, Lorna Fencer Napurrurla or Yulyurlu, her real name, raised Judy in the bush. She spent her formative years in the bush until some white people rounded the family up against their will and took them to Yuendumu. Judy thinks the problem was the gold at the site now called the Granites. Many of the family ended up addicted to alcohol in Alice Springs but Judy never drank. Judy had 8 brothers and sisters and three daughters. She has six surviving grandchildren.

Selected Exhibitions:

  • Ngurra Mala - Les Lieux du Reve, Ecole des beaux-arts, Grenoble, France (1991)
  • Yapa, Peintres Aborigenes De Balgo et Lajamanu - Baudoin Lebon Gallery, Paris (1991)
  • Aboriginal Olympic Exhibition - Phillip Morris, Lausanne (1998) 
  • Warnayaka Warlpiri - Karen Brown Gallery, Darwin (1998)
  • Lajamanu Womens Artists, Coo-ee, Sydney (2000)
  • Artists of Lajamanu - Tandanya, Adelaide  (2000)
  • Yilpinji, Love, Magic and Ceremony - Japingka Gallery, Fremantle (2003)
  • Alcheringa Gallery, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (2003)
  • Judy Napangardi Martin - Japingka Gallery, Fremantle (2005)

Lajamanu Community, formerly named Hooker Creek, is 580kms south west of Katherine, Northern Territory. Lajamanu is half way between Alice Springs and Darwin to the west near the NT/WA border. The town is very remote, with a population of around 900 Warlpiri people.

Warnayaka Art is staffed mainly by the children of the older generation of Indigenous Lajamanu residents who remember their first contact with white Australia. They maintain the computerised data base and run the art centre production. Older and younger community members produce Aboriginal dot paintings and make wooden artefacts. The centre is a place for a cup of tea and a song and dance, and then a trip into the Spinifex desert to look for goanna and lizards or to collect bush coconut, bush banana, yams and bush honey from native bees.

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