Narelle Reid Napangardi / Women’s Ceremony

Narelle Reid Napangardi was born near Tjukurla, Western Australia. and began painting at the Centre for Aboriginal Artists, Alice Springs in 1987. Her and her family now reside in Alice Springs enabling Narelle to focus heavily on her art.

Narelle depicts her traditional country with a distinctive personal style. Many of her paintings feature the puli (rock formations) and tali (sandhills) of this country and tell women’s ceremonial stories related to the formation of the natural environment around Tjukurla. This area is dominated by expansive sand hills and rock holes containing water where bush foods are found.

Essential to Narelle’s work is the women’s sacred stories (minyma stories) involving the role of the women as healers and providers in Ngaanyatjarra society.

Selected Exhibitions

2000 

• Salt, Sand and Spinifex, Japingka Gallery

2002

• Mia Ma Gallery, Melbourne
• The Contemporaries, Contemporary Artspace, Brisbane.

Selected Collections

• Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, Darwin

This painting depicts women’s ceremonial sites surrounding Tjukurla in the Western Desert of Central Australia – traditional homelands to the artist. The iconography illustrated in this painting of the circles represents the women sitting around the waterholes. Ceremonial sites carry a deep spiritual meaning and it is where the women narrate their sacred Aboriginal dreamtime stories, through song lines, dance cycles and body paint.