Renelle Napanangka McCormack / Vaughan Springs Dreaming (3158-21)

Product Description

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

Renelle Napanangka McCormack was born in 1989 in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Yuelamu community which is located approximately 300 km north west of Alice Springs on the Tanami Track which runs from the Stuart Highway to Halls Creek in Western Australia. Renelle has 3 brothers and 3 sisters and is the daughter of Lola Nampijinpa Brown, an established artist with Warlukurlangu Art Centre. Renelle went to Yirara College, an Aboriginal boarding college in Alice Springs, finishing school at the end of Year 11. She is married and has one girl and one boy.

In 2010 Renelle began painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community approximately 70 km west of Yuelamu. She began painting when she visited her mother, who now lives in Yuendumu. She paints her Father’s Pikilya Jukurrpa (Vaughan Springs Dreaming), Dreaming which relates directly to her land, its features and animals. She uses traditional iconography, while developing a contemporary individualistic style to depict her traditional Jukurrpa.

Renelle lives in Yuelamu with her husband but visits Yuendumu regularly to see her mother and paint at the Art Centre.

Pikilyi is a large and important waterhole and natural spring near Mount Doreen station. Pikilyi Jukurrpa (Vaughan Springs Dreaming) tells of the home of two rainbow serpents, ancestral heroes who lived together as man and wife. The woman ‘rainbow serpent’ was of the Napanangka skin group, the man was a Japangardi. This was a taboo relationship contrary to Warlpiri religious law. Women of the Napanangka and Napangardi subsection sat by the two serpents, picking lice off them. For this service, the two serpents allowed the women to take water from the springs at Pikilyi. This was because the serpents were the ‘kirda’, or ceremonial owners, for that country. The spirits of these two rainbow serpents are still at Pikilyi today. This Dreamings belongs to the women and men of the Japanangka/Napanangka and Japangardi/Napangardi skin groups.