Michael Japaljarri Wayne / Red Kangaroo Dreaming (3126-23)

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

Michael Japaljarri Wayne was born in 1985 in the Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community located 290 km north-west from Alice Springs in the NT of Australia He is the son of Johnny Jungarrayi and Lee Nangala Gallagher-Wayne and the grandson of Mary Napangardi Gallagher, all successful artists working with Warlukurlangu Artists. He watched his parents and grandparents paint their Jukurrpa and listened to their stories. He is married to Ritasha Nampijinpa Watson and has one son, Johnny.

He has lived in the Aboriginal Community of Yuendumu his whole life. He attended the local high school where he finished Year 8 in 2001. When he finished school he worked for the Community Development Employment Project (CDPE) and also worked on the Mt Theo Program, a successful program started by Yuendumu Community to address chronic petrol sniffing in Yuendumu.

Michael has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu, since 2003. He paints his father’s Jukurrpa stories, Dreamings which related directly to his land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. These stories were passed down to him by his father and his father’s father before him for millennia.

When he is not painting or working he enjoys playing football with the local Yuendumu team and hunting for goanna and kangaroo.

This painting depicts the Marlu Jukurrpa (red kangaroo Dreaming) from Yarnardilyi and Jurnti (Mt Dennison area). ‘Marlu’ are highly valued as a food source by Warlpiri people. In the story of this painting an old ancestral kangaroo named Warlawee, who made its camp at Jurnti and moves from place to place – hunting during the day and returning at night to the camp, which it has formed by digging depressions in the soft ground. Warlawee travelled around large areas of country looking for their preferred foods, which include ‘yukuri’ (fresh green growth) and ‘yulkardi’ (desert cucumber) a low-growing herb found underneath ‘mulga’ trees which is used by Warlpiri people for medicinal purposes. He is thinking about having a ceremony for men. Women are not permitted to dance in this ceremony. This Jukurrpa is the custodial responsibility of Japaljarri/Jungarrayi men and Napaljarri/Nungarrayi women. In contemporary Warlpiri paintings traditional iconography is used to represent the Jukurrpa, particular sites and other elements. Concentric circles are often used in depictions of this story to represent the rocks at Yarnardilyi. The arc shapes depict the kangaroo’s camp in the Jurnti area and ‘E’ and hooked shapes usually depict the ‘marlu wirliya’ (kangaroo fore and hind footprints) while long, straight lines represent the ‘marlu ngirnti’ (kangaroo tail tracks).