Mabon

Judith Nangala Crispin (b. 1970)
Judith Nangala Crispin is an Australian visual
artist, poet and musician, and a descendant of
Bpangerang people of North East Victoria. Her
skin name, Nangala, was given to her by the
Warlpiri people of the remote Tanami Desert
in northern Australia, a place she has lived
for a few months each year for over a decade.
Her work includes themes of displacement
and identity loss, a reflection on her ancestry,
but it is primarily centred on the concept of
connection with the land. This work forms
a part of Crispin’s ongoing series depicting
the transcendent ascending forms of recently
deceased fauna. Crispin’s camera-less method
of photography incorporates a range of
processes. Her own developed alternative
process of ‘lumachrome glass printing’,
combines elements of lumen printing, cliché
verre, chemical alchemy and drawing. She
works within a mobile geodesic dome which
functions as a giant lens where light streams
penetrate its plastic walls. The mobility of
her studio allows her to go to the site of her
subject, prior to respectful burial. The muse,
is raised onto a plastic box, rested on special
photographic paper for up to 50 hours as the
passage of sun and moonlight exposes its
posthumous portrait. Each work is viewed as
a collaboration with nature, where honouring
the subject is a key objective. In each work
the animals are diaphanous where light has
literally passed through their bodies. They
appear drawn in a primitive motion by a
slipstream of spirit, levitating in a space of
brooding luminosity that appears sentient
and wholly focused on the task of enfolding
each creature back into its care. The result
offers a profound sense of what lies beyond.
Nangala Crispin has published a collection of
poetry, The Myrrh-Bearers (Sydney: Puncher
& Wattmann, 2015), and a book of images and
poems made while living with the Warlpiri,
The Lumen Seed (New York: Daylight Books,
2017). She is a member of Oculi collective, one
of the chapter leads of Women Photograph
(Sydney), and was the 2021 Artist in residence
with Music Viva. She is also the Poetry
Editor for The Canberra Times. She has
also directed and worked on two major
social justice research projects – The Julfa
Project, which preserved photographic
records of a destroyed Armenian cemetery
and digitally reconstructed the site from
new and existing images; and Kurdiji 1.0, an
Aboriginal suicide prevention app, which
strengthens resilience in young indigenous
people by reconnecting them with community
and culture. Nangala Crispin work has been
exhibited internationally.
‘On a night of meteor showers and lit uranium mines, Jeremy, released from his chickenhawk body by
a passing truck, unfolds his thousand-eyed wings.’
Lumachrome glass print, cliche-verre, chemigram, drawing. Roadkilled chickenhawk, sand,
vegemite, household and decomposition chemicals, rodinal, graphite, biro, bromide, wax, and
marbles on Fomapan fibre paper. Exposed 47 hours in rainlight in a geodesic dome, 130 x 82 cm
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