Alicka Napanangka Brown / Bush Potato Dreaming (3A)

Artwork is accompanied by Warlukurlangu Artists (Yuendumu) Art Centre Certificate of Authenticity/Provenance

Alicka Napanangka Brown was born on the 9th May 1998, in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 290 km north-west of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. She is the daughter of Maria Nampinjinpa Brown and Grand-daughter of Wendy Nungarrayi Brown, well-known artists in their own right. She has one sister Antoinette Napanangka Brown who also paints for Warlukurlangu Art Centre. Alicka comes from a long line of artists and has a good grounding in painting, watching her family paint and listening to her stories since she was a child.

In 2012, at the age of 14, Alicka began painting for Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation in Yuendumu. She mainly paints her Grandmother’s Yanjirlpirri Jukurrpa (Star Dreaming) and her father’s Yarla Jukurrpa (Bush Potato Dreaming), stories that relate directly to the land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. She began using traditional iconography but because of her love for pattern and colour she has developed an individualist style using pattern and design in a variety of contexts to depict her traditional jukurrpa.

Alicka attended the local Yuendumu school. When she finished school, she devoted all her time to painting.

This dreaming comes from an area to the east of Yuendumu called Cockatoo Creek. ‘Yarla’ (bush potato) are fibrous tubers that grow beneath a low spreading plant, found by looking for cracks in the ground. This edible tuber grows from roots which seek out moisture to sprout new plants. Yarla are good to eat, when cooked they are really soft and tasty. This dreaming tells of ‘yarla’ and ‘wapirti’ (bush carrot) ancestors fighting a big battle in this area. The specific site associated with this painting is a ‘mulju’ (water soakage) called Ngarparapunyu.