Julie Napaljarri Dempsey, Pikilyi Jukurrpa (Vaughn Springs Dreaming), 30x30cm

• Artist - Julie Napaljarri Dempsey
• Community - Yuendumu  
• Art Centre/Community organisation - Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation  
• Catalogue number - 3193/17
• 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.

”I like to paint because it takes me back spiritually and historically to who I am” Julie Napaljarri Dempsey was born in 1976 in Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. Her mother was artist Lorna Wilson (Dec) and her Grandfather was artist Kaapa Jampitjinpa (1920 – 1989), a well-known artist involved with the inception of the painting movement at Papunya. Her two sisters and her father, a New Zealander, all live in South Australia at Port Pirie, Clare and Adelaide. Julie lives in Yuendumu with her husband, Herbert Martin and family. Julie went to Alice Springs High School where she completed Year 10 and was boarding at Yirara College, an Aboriginal boarding college in Alice Springs. She started a family at a young age but later went on to do more studies at Batchelor College in reading and writing English. She then went bush and worked for Centre link at Kintore, a small Aboriginal community located 550 km west of Alice Springs, near the NT/WA border and the Tropic of Capricorn. Julie started painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre in Yuendumu, in 2009. She paints her Grandfather’s Jukurrpa stories that include Ngala Jukurrpa (Water dreaming), depicting Warlukurlangu, one of her Grandfather’s key sites, a rainmaking place near Mt Denison; and the Honey Ant Dreaming. As a little girl Julie watched her family painting and listened to the stories behind the paintings. She uses traditional iconography in her artwork. Today Julie likes to be around her kids, Malcolm, Marissa, Gabriella and Kiara whom she had when she was young and Breanna and Azariah from her marriage to Herbert Martin. She also likes to go hunting and travelling around her country.