Louise Numina Napananka / Body Paint and Bush Melons (LON269)

Louise was born in 1976 and is the daughter of Barbara Price Mbtitjana who is a senior painter and cultural elder from Stirling Station and Douglas Pananka Petyarre (deceased). Louise has five sisters, Jacinta, Lanita, Selina, Caroline and Sharon Numina, who are also well-respected artists from Utopia.

Louise, along with her sisters and brothers were sent to boarding school in Darwin as no secondary schooling was available in Tennant Creek, 500kms north of Alice Springs. Louise went on to complete a Diploma of Fine Arts from the Northern Territory University. After she completed her studies Louise moved back to Stirling Station and worked with the Community Development Program.

Louise’s family come from a long line of desert artists of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement including her world renowned aunties, the late Gloria and Kathleen Petyerre. Many women from the Petyerre, Mbtitjana and Numina family name hold custody and are knowledge keepers of stories such as Bush Medicine Leaves, Bush Tucker, Seeds, Soakage and Womens’ Ceremony, in common with other skin groups across the vast arid landscape and desert areas of central Australia.

Subjects of importance in the theme-series paintings are various bush tucker stories. Plant foods include wild berries, plums, onion, yam, seeds etc. Many animals can be depicted as a food source or as totems such as Thorny Devil Lizard and Dingo Tracks. Womens’ Ceremony, Awelye Body Art Ceremony are mostly painted by senior ladies but younger women need to know it from a young age. Some themes such as Bush Tucker can be open and universal and others can be secret and passed down through cultural ceremonies. Knowing, carrying and reinforcing these stories gives respect for Country and ancestors and shows responsibility and care of holding such stories to keep the stories and traditional practices alive. The knowledge must be retold repeatedly and handed on. The Numina Sisters have all been taught to paint by their elder painter grandmothers, mother-aunties and cousin-sisters connected across the Central Desert region.

Louise lives in Darwin with her husband and children. Her sisters also live in Darwin and they often travel back to Ti-Tree and Stirling Station in the north Utopia region near Tennant Creek.

Body Paint and Bush Melons comprises large and small patches or circles of colour strewn across the canvas. This dreaming tells the story of the sweet bush tucker that comes from a very small bush and is only found in Atnwengerrp. Once very abundant and fruiting in the summer it is now very hard to find. The women used to collect this fruit and scrape out the small black seeds. They would then eat the fruit immediately or cut it into pieces and skewer them onto a piece of wood and dry them to be eaten in the coming months when bush tucker was scarce.

During the ceremonies the women will paint their bodies and breasts in various designs which represent the particular ceremony being performed. Mostly these are curved or straight lines, including circles and squares.

This painting depicts the various ceremonial sites, the bush melons and the women’s breasts which are painted with body paint designs.