Vanetta Nampijinpa Hudson / Fire Country Dreaming (843-19ny)

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

Vanetta Nampijinpa Hudson was born on 7 April 2001, in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Nyirripi, a remote aboriginal community located approximately 430 km north-west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. She is the daughter of Daphne Napururrla White and Peter Hudson and has two sisters. She is the granddaughter of Ursula Napangardi Hudson and Freda Napaljarri Jurrah. Vanetta went to the local school in Nyirripi before attending Worawa Aboriginal College in Melbourne, Victoria. A private boarding school catering for girls in the middle years of schooling. When she finished schooling she returned to Nyirripi.

Vanetta began painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu and Nyirripi, in 2017. She paints her father’s Warlukurlangu Jukurrpa (Fire Dreaming), stories which relate 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 his father before him for millennia. She uses pattern and colour to develop a modern interpretation of her traditional culture.

When Vanetta is not painting, she likes to play softball or basketball with her friends.

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.