Michelle Possum Nungurrayi
Michelle, born in 1970 in the remote Mount Allan, northwest of Alice Springs, received early artistic guidance from her father, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, a renowned artist. Commencing her painting career in the mid-eighties, Michelle's work reflects her father's distinctive style, infused with vivid colors and themes of female ceremonies and narratives.
Her art predominantly features aerial perspectives of her formative landscapes, accentuating indigenous cultural iconography. Depicting bush tucker stories, seed dreamings, fire dreamings, worm dreamings, goanna dreamings, and her grandmother’s country, her compositions interweave these elements into a cohesive visual narrative.
Michelle's art resonates with Western audiences due to its evocative portrayal of botanical and topographical elements and human presence engaging in various activities within the natural milieu, encompassing men with hunting tools and women with digging sticks and coolamons.
Presently situated in Melbourne, Michelle collaborates with her sister, Gabriella, within this vibrant artistic community, providing an enriching environment for their creative pursuits.
Meaning behind the artwork
My Grandmother's Country
In this painting, the artist depicts Women’s ceremonial sites surrounding Tjukurla and Yuelamu in the western desert of Central Australia, which Michelle inherited from her Ancestral Grandmother, who travelled to this Anmatyerre site in the Tanami Desert during the Dreamtime at Creation. Ceremonial sites carry a deep spiritual meaning, and it is where the women narrate their sacred Aboriginal dreamtime stories through song lines, dance cycles and body paint. The painting shows the sand hills, freshwater soakages, dried salty swamps and rock holes that are carved into the bedrock and supply drinking water in times of drought. The vegetation includes Spinifex grass, wild bush wheat, honey flowers for sugar bags (native bee honey), as well as bush tucker, which grows underground, such as sweet yams.
In general, this painting represents an amalgamation of the present and the past, a continuous comprehensive philosophical summary of the region’s culture through the eyes of an important custodian of the region.
The Star Dreaming story of the Seven Sisters is one of the most widely distributed ancient stories among Aboriginal Australians. The songline for this story covers more than half the width of the continent, from deep in the Central Desert to the West Coast. The songline travels through many different language groups, and different sections of the narrative are recognized in different parts of the country.
Seven Sister's Dreaming Story
In the Seven Sisters story in Aboriginal Australia, the group of stars is Napaljarri sisters from one skin group. In the Warlpiri story of this Jukurrpa, the sisters are often represented by the Jampijinpa man Wardilyka, who is in love with the woman. Then, the morning star, Jukurra-jukurra, a Jakamarra man who is also in love with the seven Napaljarri sisters, is shown chasing them across the night sky. They are seen to be running away, fleeing from the man who wants to take one of the sisters for his wife. However, under traditional law, the man pursuing the sisters is from the wrong skin group and is forbidden to take a Napaljarri wife.
