BJO873
90cm x 60cm
Better World Art – Chain Stitch Rug Theo Nangala Hudson
Size: 3ft x 2ft (91cm x 61cm)
AZ003
Biography
Theo (Faye) Nangala Hudson was born in 1989 in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Nyirripi, a remote Aboriginal community located 440 km north-west of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia where her parents lived. She was born to Mika and Ursula Napangardi Hudson and has older twin brothers. Theo attended the local school until she was 14 years. When she left school she did odd jobs and later joined the Nyirripi Night Patrol, a service that provides safe transportation; diversion from contact with the criminal justice system; and intervention to prevent disorder in communities. Theo is married and has three children.
Theo began painting with the Warlukurlangu Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu in 2002, when she was 13 years of age. “I would watch my Grandmother paint and listen to her stories”. She began to paint in earnest with the art centre in 2006. Warlukurlangu makes regular visits to Nyirripi to drop off canvas, paint and brushes for the artists and to collect finished artwork. Theo paints her mother’s Jukurrpa (Dreamings) and her father’s Jukurrpa, such as Yuparli Jukurrpa (Bush Banana Dreaming) from her mother’s side and Pikilyi Jukuurpa (Vaughan Springs Dreaming) from her father’s side. These Dreamings have been passed down through the millennia. Theo uses an unrestricted palette and loves to create patterns that depict a modern interpretation of her traditional culture.
When Theo is not painting and looking after her family she likes to go hunting for Yurrampi (honey ants) and Yuparli (bush banana).
Denise Johnson Bush Tobacco – 61cm x 46cm DJO780
DJO780
61cm x 46cm
Historically and still today, Aboriginal people from desert regions use wild tobacco plants that are known by different names including Pituri and Mingkulpa. Pituri is a natural plant that grows from Queensland right across the desert to Western Australia. In Central Australia the leaves from this plant are used for chewing. The scientific name of the family of Pituri plants is Nicotiana spp. Scientific names for the different types of pituri that are most popular in Central Australia are Mingkulpa N. excelsior and N. gossei. The leaves and stems from the pituri bush are dried and then mixed with burnt ash from specific trees. The mix is then chewed and held in the mouth for long periods of time. Pituri is shared among the group and traded widely. Because pituri isn’t burnt it doesn’t contain all the poisonous chemicals that cigarettes do, but it still has high levels of nicotine that make it addictive and it may also cause health problems. In the deserts of the Red Centre, bush tobacco is still very much at the heart of traditional indigenous life. The Pintupi-Luritja, and Pitjantjatjara communities that lie west and southwest of Alice Springs, as well as the Warlpiri and Anmetyarre to the North, are the undisputed bush tobacco homeland. The plant of choice there is mingkulpa, known to science as Nicotiana gossei or suaveolens— a species of classical nicotine, lush, strongly scented, so strongly, in fact, that coming on a ravine full of fresh-growing plants can set the head awhirl. Finding your tobacco is just the first step. The alkaline white ash, or tjunpa mixed in with the leaf to help release its nicotine must come from the burnt wood of certain trees: arkinki (desert bloodwood), termite-bored mantala (black gidgee) and utjanypa (branched spearbush) are among the best: if all else fails, there’s always plain old mulga, wanari. How to make good ash, and blend it with the dried leaf, how best to moisten the quid of tobacco in your mouth — these are skills that were once taught with great care to the young, and are still passed on. There are rules and protocols. It is wrong to ask for or accept mingkulpa from senior men or women at the apex of the traditional law, who might use it to cast a spell on you. It is important to share your mingkulpa with your family and pass it willingly from into their hands.
