Melissa Larry Nungurrayi

Melissa Larry Nungurrayi Paintings

 Quick Facts 

  • Full Name: Melissa Larry Nungurrayi (also recorded as Melissa Nungarrayi Larry)

  • Place of Birth / Origin: Alice Springs Hospital; raised in Kintore, Northern Territory

  • Current Community: Nyirripi, Central Desert Region, Northern Territory

  • Language Group / People: Pintupi / Warlpiri (Kintore/Nyirripi region)

  • Painting Since: 2006

  • Art Centre: Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, Yuendumu

  • Main Themes: Yumari Jukurrpa (Yumari Dreaming)

  • Primary Medium: Acrylic on canvas and linen

Melissa Larry Nungurrayi is a Central Desert artist whose painting centres on Yumari, a single, deeply personal Jukurrpa inherited from her mother. Working out of Nyirripi with Warlukurlangu Artists, she has spent close to two decades building a distinctive body of Aboriginal art around this one significant Dreaming, developing her own modern, individualist style while remaining true to the traditional story at its heart.

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 Early Life 

Melissa was born at Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Kintore, a remote community around 550 kilometres west of Alice Springs, near the Northern Territory and Western Australia border on the Tropic of Capricorn. Her father died while she was young, and her mother, Carol Nampijinpa Larry, raised Melissa and her three sisters alone in Kintore. Melissa attended the local school there, and after finishing school she travelled to Nyirripi, a remote community in the Central Desert Region, where she met her future husband. The couple married and settled in Nyirripi, where they raised five children, all of whom attended the local school.

 Artistic Journey 

Melissa began painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre based in Yuendumu, in 2006. The art centre makes regular visits to Nyirripi, around 140 kilometres west of Yuendumu, dropping off canvas, paint and brushes for local artists and collecting finished work, a system that has allowed Melissa to paint as a full-time artist from her own community.

Rather than working across a wide range of Dreamings, Melissa has focused her Aboriginal artwork almost entirely on Yumari, her mother's Jukurrpa, passed down to her directly and originally passed to the family by a Pintupi man. She paints using an unrestricted palette, moving away from the more traditional colour conventions associated with this story to develop a modern, individualist visual style, while keeping the underlying traditional narrative intact.

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 Artworks and Exhibitions 

Melissa's paintings depict Yumari, a site made up of a collection of rocks west of Kintore in the Gibson Desert. Yumari is the location of a Jukurrpa telling a story of forbidden love: a union between a Japaljarri man and a Nangala woman, a relationship that fell outside the kinship rules governing who could marry whom. In contemporary Warlpiri and Pintupi painting, traditional iconography is used to represent this story and the site connected to it, and in Melissa's work concentric circles are frequently used to represent warnirri, or rockholes, marking the presence of water across the Yumari landscape.

Her works have appeared under a number of closely related titles reflecting this single Dreaming, including Yumari Dreaming, Yumari Jukurrpa and Yumari Tjukurrupa, produced across a range of canvas and linen sizes.

Melissa's Aboriginal art has moved consistently through the Australian secondary market over the past several years, with works regularly appearing across several established auction houses:

Ozbid Auctions

Multiple sales between 2022 and 2025, including Yumari Jukurrpa and Yumari Tjukurrupa, several reaching estimates of AUD $3,000 to $5,000

Lawsons

Yumari Dreaming works offered in 2025 sales

Charleston's Fine Art Auctions

A further Melissa Nungarrayi Larry work offered in 2022

Women's Ceremony series

Additional works from this related body of work have also sold at auction, reflecting a second, closely connected thread within her practice

This sustained presence across multiple auction houses over several years reflects steady collector interest in her focused, single-Dreaming body of work.

 Legacy and Role 

As a full-time artist working within Warlukurlangu Artists' community-based studio model, Melissa Larry Nungurrayi represents a generation of Central Desert painters carrying forward a specific, inherited Jukurrpa with individual creative freedom. By dedicating her practice to Yumari, the story entrusted to her by her mother, she continues a living tradition of family-held Dreaming knowledge, while her unrestricted, modern approach to colour and composition shows how a traditional Jukurrpa can be reinterpreted anew by each generation of artists who paint it.

 Discover Authentic Aboriginal Art 

If you are interested in collecting authentic works by Melissa Larry Nungurrayi or other respected Central Desert artists, Mandel Aboriginal Art Gallery offers a carefully curated selection sourced from reputable Aboriginal-owned art centres and trusted galleries.

Whether you are beginning your collection or adding to an established one, Mandel Aboriginal Art Gallery provides genuine Indigenous artworks that honour Australia's rich cultural heritage while supporting Aboriginal artists and their communities.

Contact us to discover more Aboriginal artists like Melissa Larry and their artworks.

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