PADDY JUPURRURLA NELSON AND LARRY JUNGARRAYI SPENCER | YARLA JUKURRPA (BUSH POTATO DREAMING)

Painted at Yuendumu, 1986

The Gabrielle Pizzi Collection

Thence by descent

Achille Bonito Olivia, Aborigena, Arte Australiana Contemporanea, Torino, Palazzo Bricherasio, Electa, Milano 2001, p.42, pl.4

Achille Bonito Olivia, Desert Art, Electa, Milano, 2002, p.46, pl.10., illus.

Achille Bonito Olivia and Gabrielle Pizzi, Mythology and Reality, Contemporary Aboriginal Desert Art from the Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, The Jerusalem Centre for the Performing Arts, Jerusalem, Israel, p.31, illus.

Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, Mythology & Reality, Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2004, p.44, illus.

Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson and Larry Jungarrayi Spencer were two of the five artists who painted the thirty doors of the school in the Warlpiri community of Yuendumu in 1983. The project intended to remind the students of their traditions and their heritage, to place their ancestors firmly in the midst of the European-driven education they were receiving.

The project had unforeseen and lasting consequences. The elders at Yuendumu were well aware of the painting movement that had emerged a decade before at the community of Papunya, not even 100 miles away. They were, however, reluctant to emulate the practice of painting traditional designs in European materials on small boards or canvases fearing it may devalue their Dreamings. The exercise of painting on the large scale afforded by the school doors was, however, a catalyst to painting large canvases that could accommodate epic ancestral narratives that spread over a vast landscape. Within two years of the school door project, Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson and Larry Jungarrayi Spencer along with Paddy Japaljarri Sims (1917-2010) had painted the monumental 'Yanjilypiri Jukurrpa (Star Dreaming)' that was the first large canvas painting from Yuendumu to be acquired by a major public art institution – the National Gallery of Australia.¹

'Yarla Jukurrpa (Bush Potato Dreaming)' alludes to the Bush Potato or Yam ancestor that is described by Paddy Nelson as a being in human form ‘with his feet dragging along the ground’ as he meandered across an expansive landscape, following the erratic path of the roots of the yam plant.² In the Dreaming, the Yam ancestor stops at one site after another (shown as roundels in the painting) to enter the earth and reemerge bearing yams.

1. Yanjilypiri Jukurrpa (Star Dreaming), 1985, is illustrated in: Cubillo, F. and W. Caruana (eds), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art: collection highlights,National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2010, p. 68; and in Caruana, W., Aboriginal Art, World of Art Series, Thames and Hudson, London and New York, 2012, plate 115, p. 134.

2. See Warlukurlangu Artists, Yuendumu Doors – Kuruwarri, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1987, pp. 44-47. One school door painted with the Yam design by Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson is illustrated on page 45.

Wally Caruana