Alpar Storyby Jessie Bird Ngale

Jessie Bird Ngale was born in the early 1980’s and is the eldest daughter of famous Aboriginal artist Lyndsay Bird Mpetyane and Mavis Bird. Lynsday Bird is a senior custodian of many important stories from the Utopia region in Central Australia. His family are Anmatyerre speakers and their country is Alhalkere which is a soakage, Mulga Bore Outstation.

Jessie has been surrounded by many family members who are well known artists and Utopia community has produced some of the more famous and talented Aboriginal contemporary artists, including, the most collectable artist, Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Jessie has been encouraged and supported by her family to take up painting and has been given consent to paint permissible stories. She typically paints bush foods and her country. Over time she has developed her own style and is not afraid to showcase a variety of colour hues in her artworks.

In her paintings Jessie paints stories associated with women collecting bush foods in her country at Mulga Bore. Her Dreaming is Alpar (Rat-tail plant) Seed, and Awelye which is a general term used to describe womens ceremonies and body paint designs and translates to “Women’s Business”. Her “Alpar” paintings depicts the women collecting and crushing the leaves of the Alpar, they would be soaked in water and used as a medicinal wash. The seeds were also valuable and crushed into a powder as an ingredient for damper (a type of bread). Women perform ceremonies celebrating the Alpar and paying homage to the spirit of the Alpar to ensure perpetual germination. Her “Awelye” paintings depict ceremonial body designs in a layering technique of curvilinear lines; the colours of each stroke contrast each other creating a mesmerising pattern of colour and design.

In recent times Jessie has actively begun painting for frequently and whilst she has been painting for a number of years on and off, over the last 12 months she has found a renewed energy in her artworks.

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