Pereltye

Pereltye is a white sugary substance made by the lerp scale insect and found on the leaves of kunjumarra (river red gum trees). Long ago, it was collected by women for eating, by hitting the leaves of the tree. They would collect it from the sand and carry it in a coolamon. It was the subject of Nancy and Rene's late mother J Long Nampajinpa, who featured in the 2022 NATSIAA show just months before her passing. Nancy and Rene's newly blooming collaborative practice continues her story.

“It comes out in cold weather, not real windy, when its July and August maybe.”(NL). They are collected and kept as a sweet snack. “You just pull the leaves down and pick it on them leaves. Sometimes just put a tarp underneath and then shake the leaves and they’ll fall on the tarp to collect big mob.”(RL) “We would always go out with my Grandmother collecting those things, long time ago, 40 years. My mother would go with her mother and her grandmother too, collecting that sugar.”(NL).

"We doing this painting and its reminding us about our mum."(NL) "We used to have a little art centre at the night patrol place, an old women's centre there. She used to go there and paint and I would go there and paint. She was the oldest lady painting at Arlpwe too. She never stopped going there."(RL). "She would always come back to paint this one. It reminded her of when she used to collect them all with the kids. I always sit there alongside her watching her do that painting, looking at her doing these designs. She would tell me to do it this way and then do that way. I started helping her when she got sick. Painting this remind me of her, its like she's here with us doing it.'(NL) "We'll keep on carrying on what she was doing, her work and story. Now we're trying to get into that Telstra prize that she was in. And we'll start doing different sizes maybe for exhibition one day, to share that story."(RL).

Nancy and Rene, now the eldest generation of their family, are sharing these stories through their art across generations like it was passed to them. In taking on this large scale work, they enlisted the help of Rene's daughter Tisha and Nancy's daughter-in-law Georgina, teaching and directing them just as Nampijinpa had done before. "I'm happy that we're doing it and that everyone recognised her for her work. We're continuing her legacy. It makes us really proud." (Tisha Corbett).