Rahab Nungarrayi Spencer / Goanna Dreaming (6A)

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

Rahab Nungarrayi Spencer was born in 1967 in Amoongana, an Aboriginal community 15 kms south-east of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. Just after Rahab was born her family moved to Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 290 km north-west of Alice Springs. She has three brothers, Edgar, Jacob and Lloyd and a younger sister Ruth. Both her parents have passed away.

Rahab attended Yuendumu School before going to Yirara College, a boarding college in Alice Springs. She returned to Yuendumu after she finished school and worked in the local shop. She later married ‘a white fella”, Warren Freeman. She has three sons, her two eldest sons are married and her youngest son loves footie and plays for Yuendumu Magpies. Her three sons are from a previous relationship. She has one daughter from her marriage to Warren. She also has three grandchildren.

Rahab has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation since 2007. She mainly paints her father’s Jukurrpa stories, Dreamings which related directly to her land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. These stories were passed down to her by her father and mother and their parents before them for millennia. Rahab uses traditional iconography and likes to use Aboriginal colours, that is red, black and yellow, while developing a modern individualist style to depict her traditional Jukurrpa.

When Rahab is not painting she loves to cook.

The painting and story for the Wardapi Jukurrpa (Goanna Dreaming) comes from an area to the east of Yuendumu called Yarumayi, a place important for its ochre deposits and as a site for collecting ceremonial stones. The custodians of the Wardapi Jukurrpa are Nungarrayi and Napaljarri women and Jungarrayi and Japaljarri men. This Painting depicts Wardapi ancestors returning home to this sacred site. It tells also of the return of the custodians of this Dreaming to collect ceremonial stones that represent the Ngipiri (eggs) of the Wardapi ancestors in their ceremonies.