Tina Napangardi Martin / Desert Truffle Dreaming (2186-21ny)

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

Tina Napangardi Martin Robertson was born in 1960 in Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 290km north-west of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. Her parents and grandparents are deceased and she has only one sister who lives in Laramba community, near Napperby Station.

Tina went to the local school in Yuendumu. She lived there for most of her life but now lives in Nyirripi after she married her second husband, Douglas Wilson. They have one son born in 1997. She also has five grown-up children from her first marriage.

Tina has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artisits Aboriginal Corporation since 1996. When Warlukurlangu Artists began exploring print making in 1997, Tina began screen printing and batik. However it wasn’t until 2007, when the children were grownup, that Tina found the time to paint on a regular basis.

She paints her father’s Jukurrpa stories which include Yurrampi Jukurrpa (Honey Ant Dreaming) and Janyinki Jukurrpa (Yanyinki Dreaming). She also paints Ngalyipi Jukurrpa (Snake Vine Dreaming) and recently Pulundari Jukurrpa (Mushroom Dreaming). Tina enjoys painting, especially when her children and grandchildren are watching. She loves to explain to them the meaning of the different designs and patterns. She also enjoys going hunting on weekends for bush tomato and bush sultanas and when she can she visits her father’s country and her country.

In this painting women of the Napanangka and Napangardi subsection are collecting ‘jinti-parnta’ (edible fungus) far to the west of Yuendumu at Karnta Karlangu, near to another place called Mina Mina. ‘Jinti-parnta’ is also known as native truffle and appears in the sandhills after the winter rains. The growing fungus forces the earth above it to crack, exposing it. Then, women collect it, squeezing out the juicie before cooking. Jinti-parnta is prepared by cooking in hot ashes.

Ancestral women travelled north through Janyinki and other places, then to the east through to Alcoota country, while collecting ‘jinti-parnta’. They got to Mina Mina, which is a ceremonial place belonging to Japanangka/ Japangardi men and Napanangka/Napangardi women. Their associated land continues far to the west of Yuendumu into sand hill country. There are a number of ‘mulju’ (water soakages) and a large clay pan at Mina Mina and it is at these sites that the women danced and performed ceremonies. As a result ‘karlangu’ (digging sticks) rose up out of the ground, which the women carried with them on their long journey east. They danced and sang the whole way with no sleep. The women collected other types of bush tucker such as ‘yakajirri’ (bush sultana). In the paintings of this Dreaming concentric circles are often used to represent the jinti-parnta that the women have collected.