Image: Linda Syddick Napaltjarri (Pintupi, ca. 1937-2021), ‘Nativity, 2003.

Linda Syddick (Aboriginal name Tjunkiya Wukula Napaltjarri) (ca. 1937-2021) was a Pintupi artist from Australia’s Western Desert region whose work was influenced by her Christian and Indigenous beliefs and heritage. Living a seminomadic lifestyle until the age of 8 or 9, she settled with her family at the Lutheran Mission at Haasts Bluff in the 1940s. She was taught to paint in the 1980s by her uncles Uta Uta Tjangala and Nosepeg Tjupurrula, who were both significant figures in the Papunya Tula art movement. She painted Tingari and biblical stories and was a three-time finalist for the prestigious Blake Prize. Her works are held by the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of NSW, the Art Gallery of South Australia, and many other institutions.

In Syddick’s 2003 Nativity, a series of wavy, concentric blue and white lines encompass Joseph, baby Jesus, and Mary, while many more lines in blue and beige converge on the trio from the image’s border. The artwork conveys a vibrating joy! And myriad pathways leading to the birth of the Saviour. Jesus is the centrepiece of the composition, a little tot represented geometrically as a circle. A sun? An egg? A pebble thrown into a lake, sending ripples outward? A reverberant well?

Christmas Day – readings and carols

Sunday, December 25, 9.30am

All welcome, in the church and online, for a service of readings and carols on Christmas morning. Please note special time: 9.30am.

Our offering will be in support of Act for Peace’s Christmas Bowl Appeal.

You are invited to make an offering via the SSUC online portal: mycb.link/46613

Christ comes … to shine a light on hostilities (toward the poor, the stranger, the most vulnerable) and to light the way of wisdom – hospitality, peace with justice … Christ comes to the anawim, the “have-nots” … as subversive and creative event. A peasant family is made holy. A young woman at risk of abandonment or worse is blessed … she bears the Promised One and will become the queen of heaven.

Our God-talk – theology, theo-poetics – begins here, again and again … the “new song” for which the psalmist calls …

Join via Zoom
Meeting ID: 879 3746 4388
Password: 087151