Delena Napaljarri Turner, Pikilyi Jukurrpa (Vaughan Springs Dreaming), 30x30cm

• Aboriginal Artist - Delena Napaljarri Turner
• Community - Nyirripi  
• Aboriginal Art Centre- Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation  
• Catalogue number - 351/20ny
• Materials - Acrylic on pre-stretched canvas
• Size(cm) - H30 W30 D3.5  
• Postage variants - Artwork posted stretched and ready to hang
• Orientation - Painted from all sides and OK to hang as wished

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.

Delena Napaljarri Turner was born on the 15 March 1991 in Alice Springs Hospital. She is an Arrernte woman, who grew up in the Ltyentye Apurte Community, also known as Santa Teresa, an Arrernte indigenous community in the Northern Territory, Australia, located about 80 kilometres south-east of Alice Springs. She began her schooling at the local school before going to Kormilda College, an Aboriginal boarding college in Darwin. She left school at the end of Year 11 and lived in Alice Springs before moving to Nyirripi, a remote aboriginal community located approximately 430 km from Alice Springs, to be with her sister. She has three children with her partner, Glen Jampijinpa Martin who also paints.

Delena began painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu and Nyirripi, in 2016. She paints her grandfather’s dreaming, Sandy Bore on the Sandover Highway, north of Alice Springs and east of the Stuart Highway, on Utopia Land. “I like to paint imaginary patterns” which she creatively combines to blend traditional motive with her own ideas of modern design.

When she is not busy with her children and when she is not painting, she likes to go hunting for bush tucker.