Nathania Nangala Granites / Fire Country Dreaming (1791-20)

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

Nathania Nangala Granites was born in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community located 290km north-west of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. She was born into a family of artists. Her mother is Valda Napangardi Granites and her grandmother is Alma Nungarrayi Granites, an established senior artist who has exhibited all over the world. Nathania grew up listening to her mother’s and her father’s dreaming stories and watching her family paint. She went to the local school in Yuendumu. When she finished school she assisted Yasmin Napurrular Musharbash, taking photos for Yasmin’s study of everyday life in an Aboriginal camp. Nathania is married and has a little boy born in 2013.

Nathania has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation since 2011. She paints her father’s Jukurrpa, particularly Ngapa Jukurrpa (Water Dreaming) and her mother’s Jukurrpa, Yankirri Jukurrpa (Emu Dreaming). These stories have been passed down over the generations for millennia and relate directly to the land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. Nathania uses an unrestricted palette to depict a modern interpretation of her traditional culture.

This Dreaming belongs to Warlukurlangu country to the south-west of Yuendumu, for which Jampijinpa/Jangala men and Nampijinpa/Nangala women have custodial responsibility. An old man ‘lungkarda’ (centralian blue-tongued lizard), of the Jampijinpa skin group, lived on a hill with his two Jangala sons. The old man would feign blindness and send the two boys hunting in search of meat. While they were gone he would hunt and eat anything that he caught before they returned.

One day the sons returned with a kangaroo that they had caught after much tracking. Unfortunately the kangaroo was sacred to the ‘lungkarda’, unbeknown to the boys. In his anger the old man decided to punish his sons and the next time they went out, he put his fire stick to the ground and sent a huge bush fire after them which chased them for many miles, at times propelling them through the air. Although the boys beat out the flames, ‘lungkarda’s’ special magic kept the fire alive and it re-appeared out of his blue-tongued lizard hole.

In contemporary Warlpiri paintings traditional iconography is used to represent the Jukurrpa, particular sites and other elements. Usually sites that are depicted in paintings of this Jukurrpa include Warlukurlangu (a men’s cave), Kirrkirrmanu (where the sacred kangaroo was killed), Wayililinypa (where the fire killed the two Jangala sons) and Marnimarnu (a water soakage) where the two Jangalas camped.