Artist: Lorna Fencer Napurrula
Language: Warlpiri/Ngaliya
Area: Lajamanu

Title: Yarla Dreaming
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size: 39 x 59 ”

COA and a series of progress pictures included.

Description:
This painting is one of my personal favorites. I think is shows Lornas great love of color and her bold confident use of the brush.

Lorna Fencer Napurrula was a Senior Warlpiri custodian. Lorna was among the many Warlpiri people forcibly relocated to Lajamanu along Hookers Creek, where a government settlement had been established. This country is the traditional land of the Gurindji Aboriginal people. Despite relocation, Lorna Fencer retained her cultural identity through ceremony, story telling and painting her art. In 1986 at the age of about 80 years old she was one of a small group of women who collectively produced the first paintings at Lajamanu.

 Lorna’s work depicts the bush foods of her country originating from Dreaming stories taught to her involving the travels of the Napurrula and Nakamarra skin(or kinship) and some Dreamings from her father’s country of Wapuurtarli.  Her main Dreamings are about the gathering and growth of bush foods such as the Yarla (Yam), Wapirti and Marlujarra. These Dreamings entitle her to paint subjects such as the bush yam (sweet potato), “ngalatji” (little white flower), bush tomato, berry, caterpillar (luju), wallaby, onion, water and particular   mens stories including boomerangs.

The Yarla is an important Dreaming for the Warlpiri women, and a staple food source in the Western Desert. Here Lorna renders it in her distinctive expressive style. Along with visually describing the Yarla, some paintings contain information about when to gather this food source and how to find it.

 The use of vibrant colours and layering creates an exuberance and depth to her work, not often seen in painting of this region, more typically known for its dot work.

 Awards

1997 Gold  Coast City Art Award, Queensland.

 

Exhibitions 

Solo:

1999 St Valentine’s Exhibition, Brisbane; ‘Tracks Across the Landscape’, Land Rover Showroom, Sydney; ‘Yapa’, Melbourne 1998; ‘Me Warlpiri’, Melbourne 1997.

 

Group:

2003 Yumarlpa Stories Original & Authentic Aboriginal Art Gallery, Melbourne

2001 A Tribute to Lorna Napurrula Fencer, Original &Authentic Aboriginal Art Gallery, Melbourne.

1999 United Nations Building, New York, USA

1998 6^th Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Exhibition Building, Melbourne

1998 John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize, NGV, Melbourne

1997 Women’s Body Paintings from Lajamanu, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

1997 Recent Acquisitions, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

1996 All About Art, Melbourne

1996 Rainbow Serpent, Vaucluse, NSW

1994 Yapakurlangu Wirrkardu, NT

1991 Aboriginal Art and Spirituality, High Court of Australia

1991Aboriginal Art, Australian Embassy, Washington, USA

1991 Paint up Big Warlpiri Women’s Art from Lajamanu, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

1988 People, Place and Art, Hilton International Hotel, Adelaide, SA.

 

 

Collections:

The Holmes à Court Collection, Perth, Western Australia

Christensen Collection (housed at Museum of Victoria)

Museum & Art Galleries of the N.T, Darwin

National Gallery of Victoria

 Perth Museum

Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra

Artbank, Sydney

Laverty Collection, Sydney

Margaret Carnegie Collection