Region: Haasts Bluff

Ngoia Pollard is a Warlpiri woman, born in Haasts Bluff in the late 1940’s. She was brought up at Haasts Bluff and remembers when people rode on camels to travel anywhere, and also talks of the time when women and young girls had to look after herds of goats. In her recollections, it was a happy time. She attended Papunya School in the 1960’s along with Lilly Kelly Napangardi. After attending school Ngoia worked in the mission kitchen before moving with her husband to Kintore. Following a period of 5 years living at Kintore, Ngoia and her husband moved to Mt. Liebig, which at the time was unoccupied. Living in a humpy with her husband and family, they received rations from Papunya on the basis of their status as an outstation. Ngoia remembers that this food supply was supplemented with hunting in the area

Ngoia began painting in 1997, painting her father’s country, sacred Warlpiri territory associated with narratives relating to the Watersnake. The oval shapes in Ngoia’s paintings are iconographic representations of the swamps and lakes near Nyrripi (Talarada) north west of Mt. Liebig. Ngoia depicts the wet and dry characteristics of this country. This region is charged with the spiritual presence of the Water snake which lives beneath the surface and Ngoia describes this area as being dangerous. The area is currently unoccupied Walpiri land. This area however, is where her father hunted prior to white settlement. Ngoia has special custodianship responsibilities for this country.

Region: Wangkatjungka

Nora Tjookootja was born around 1945 at Liturwarti in the Great Sandy Desert. As a young child she left her home country and walked up the Canning Stock Route to Bililuna. Many desert people were moving north towards the white settlements of the Kimberley cattle station country.

Nora grew up at Bililuna. She lost her granny, mother and brother at Balgo. Noras husband then brought her to Christmas Creek. She left three children behind at Bililuna. Her sister grew them up there. Then she had two children at Christmas Creek.

Nora says:

<blockquote>I was born at Liturwarti, I was little kid when we left home country. We walk up a long way to Bililuna and Balgo. Grow up at Bililuna. Husband bring Nora here, to Christmas Creek. Leave three kids at Bililuna, Sister bin grow them up. Have two kids here, Joy and Mildred Benny, but lose granny, mother and brother at Balgo.</blockquote>

In the 1980s Wangkatjungka Community was established on land excised from Christmas Creek station. From 1994 to 1998 some senior desert people began recording their stories through Karrayili adult education service. When the Karrayili annex closed in 1998, a number of senior people had became adept at painting and had begun exhibiting their work. Nora Tjookootja was one of those artists. Nora paints the waterholes and various sources of bushtucker found throughout the country of her birth.
Selected Exhibitions:

2003 Artists of Wangkajungka  From the Great Sandy Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2004 Wangkatjungka Women, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2004 Jila &amp; Tali  Waterholes and Sandhills, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT
2004 Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane, QLD
2004 Artists of Wangkatjungka – Stories of Country, Raintree Gallery, Darwin, NT
2005 Artists of Wangkatjungka, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney, NSW
2005 Yirmpurr (Living Water) Recent Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra, ACT
2005 Wangkatjungka, Ladner and Fell Gallery, Melbourne, VIC
2005 Wangkatjunka Artists: Stories from The Great Sandy Desert, Tandanya, National Aboriginal Cultural Institute Adelaide, SA

Region: Spinifex

The Spinifex Arts Project started in 1997 at Tjuntjuntjara, a small and remote community 700 kilometres to the east of Kalgoorlie, in the Great Victoria Desert. The project began as a means of documenting the people’s relationships to the significant sites of their homelands, and of recording the inter-relationship between family groups for the Spinifex Native Title claim.

The process is continuing as countrymen revisit and reconnect with traditional Pitjantjatjara lands, and the paintings further detail the pathways and the actions of Ancestors who created, travelled across and are contained within Spinifex lands. By documenting the sites, the relationships and stories provide the artists with a method of recording and passing on elements of culture that are crucial to sustaining the long-term future and health of the Spinifex People. The paintings are presented in association with Spinifex Arts Project.

Region: Warmun

Tommy Carroll is a Gija man, born in 1956 on Doon Doon Station, 100 kilometers north of Warmun Community in the East Kimberley. As a young boy he worked as a stockman at Doon Doon, and throughout his youth he also worked on Bow River and Lissadell Stations. He currently assists the Outstation Manager at Warmun Community.

Tommy commenced painting in 1999, inspired to do so by his wife, Katie Cox, who was already painting at Warmun. He says that painting makes him think about his country, about the Ngarrangkarni (Dreaming) stories and about the places he used to visit, as a child and when he was working as a stockman. His knowledge of the country in which he worked is extensive and is the pivotal focus of his paintings.

Tommy Carroll paints using natural ochres and pigments, and his works are often dark and brooding. He uses heavy concentrations of black charcoal and red natural ochres. The majority of Tommy’s paintings derive from stories near or around Doon Doon Station, and primarily stories associated with the Ngarrangkarni (Dreaming

Tommy Carroll has participated in solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia – his paintings have been acquired by private collectors, as well as the National Gallery of Australia and the Parliament House Collection.

Region: Wangkatjungka

Peter Goodijie, (1925 – 2009, bush name Kurtiji.), was a senior Wangkatjungka lawman at Kulyayi, near Well 42 on the Canning Stock Route, in Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. Kurtiji’s mother was Walmajarri and his father Wangkatjungka. His paintings record the waterholes and locations of his traditional Great Sandy Desert homelands. Most of these are only known and used by Wangkatjungka peoples, and their record remains held in the knowledge of the traditional owners.

His stories record early contact between his family and the white stockman who worked the Canning Stock Route from the early 1920’s. Members of his family were attacked and killed by stockmen in a dispute over a camel.

Goodijie said of this ordeal:

</blockquote>My father die there, (at Well 42), two mothers, my brother, all the kids. Kartiya kill whole lot. Daddy kill camel – kartiya after him. Father been kill ’em camel, tommy hawk.

Old people tell me, sit down, wait here. Kartiya go that way, two wagon. He sees ’em. What you been living here, old man? Don’t shoot me – I gotta sing you. That ole man been die there. This my country here. That kartiya shoot him, shoot him sideways.

Two mothers – she told me to run away, little boys, two brothers. Other mother, father, brother hiding properly, get away. Finish ’em whole lot, shoot ’em.</blockquote>

After escaping the killings with a brother or cousin, Goodijie later traveled north with relatives along the Canning Stock Route towards Bililuna. As a youth, he lived for a while at the old Balgo Mission, when other relatives including Uncle Wilfred, came to take him to Gogo Station. He began work on the station as a horse tailer and stockman, moving to Leopold Downs and then at Christmas Creek.

Goodijie’s family eventually settled at Wangkatjungka Community adjacent to Christmas Creek station, and there in the mid 1990’s Goodijie started painting stories of his life and his traditional country.

Peter Goodijie is represented in the National Gallery of Victoria and in major private collections.

Selected Exhibitions:

1995 Australian Embassy, Paris
1998 Ngurrara Canvas, 1998
2001 Native Title Business, Noosa Regional Gallery
2002 Michel Sourgnes Fine Arts, Brisbane
2003 Artists of Wangkajungka – Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2003 Big Country Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs
2004 Waterholes and Sandhills, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2004 Paintings from Wangkatjungka, FireWorks Gallery, Brisbane
2004 Striking Colours of the Living Desert, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney
2004 Stories of Country, Raintree Gallery, Darwin
2004 Tali and Jila, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2005 Wangkatjungka Artists, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney
2005 Wangkatjungka Artists, Tandanya, Adelaide

Region: Utopia

Emily Pwerle, the younger sister of acclaimed artist Minnie Pwerle (1914-2006), lives at Irrultja, a tiny settlement at Utopia, 300km northeast of Alice Springs, with two of her sisters, Molly and Galya Pwerle. Emily started painting in 2004 when her niece, artist Barbara Weir (daughter of Minnie Pwerle), held a painting workshop at Irrultja to encourage her aunts to take up the brush. Like her older sister Minnie, and with Minnie’s encouragement, Emily immediately demonstrated she had her own energetic style and colourful palette.

The depth and linear complexity of Emily Pwerle’s paintings have their origins in separate dreaming symbols which the artist brings together on her canvases in over-lapping layers. Awelye, an Anmatyerre word, refers to women’s business and to ceremonies associated with ritual knowledge owned only by women. Through their Awelye ceremonies, women pay homage to their ancestors, show respect for their country and dance out their collective maternal role within their community. Awelye is never performed in the presence of men.

Region: Balgo

Janie Lee was born at the old mission at Balgo around 1945. Her family had lived in the area surrounding the Canning Stock Route, her mother was born at Kulyayi, the site of Well 42. Janie says that stockman had given her parents bullock meat and tobacco. They liked bullock meat and followed one group all the way north to the end of the stock route.

During the late 1940s the family were living near Balgo, and then moved west towards Christmas Creek in the Fitzroy Valley. By this time, Wangkajunka people were holding big meetings at Christmas Creek for ceremony purposes.

Soon after this, Janies father was arrested for taking a bullock. Her mother had to look after four children during this very difficult time. Janies mother and the children moved between the sheep station at Thangoo, where cousin Peter Goodigie worked, and Christmas Creek. When Janie was old enough she started work at the station house, first in the garden, and later in the homestead. We learn about station work. We work for rations.

Janie married and had three children, who grew up at Christmas Creek. Later they moved to the new community of Ngumpan, closer to the main highway.

Janie made her first paintings in 2003, when she joined other Wangkatjungka artists in the Wangkatjungka Arts Project run by Japingka Gallery. Janie paints stories from accessorial homelands belonging to her extended family.

Selected Exhibitions:

2004 Jila &amp; Tali – Waterholes and Sandhills, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT
2004 Striking Colours of the Living Desert  Wankatjungka Country, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney, NSW
2005 Yirmpurr (Living Water) Recent Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra, ACT
2005 Big Country Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs Northern Territory
2005 Wangkatjungka, Ladner and Fell Gallery, Melbourne, VIC

Region: Utopia

Kathleen Ngale, one of the most senior Anmatyerre elders from the Utopia homelands, was born in the early 1930s, and is custodian of the Bush Plum (Anwekety) from her traditional country, Ahalpere.

Kathleen Ngale began her art career in the late 1970s with over eighty other women from the Utopia region in Central Australia, when a large project was undertaken using the medium of batik. In 1988 the first major painting project at Utopia was launched, and Kathleen along with many of the other women took up painting with acrylics on canvas.

Kathleen’s popularity as an artist grew steadily in the early 2000s, and she came to be recognised for her subtly distinctive Bush Plum paintings. These works represented the changing seasonal colours of the plant and its fruit, and were often built up in textured layers of interlacing dots. When Kathleen Ngale describes the Anwekety that feature in her paintings, she refers to the Anwekety as Bush Plum. They are, in fact, small black conkerberries that grow on the plant after good rain.

Kathleen lives with her sisters and extended family on the Utopia homelands, where as an artist Kathleen is both encouraged by them and passes on her enthusiasm to them. Artists within the family group include Polly Ngale, Glady Kemarre and Angelina Pwerle.

Region: Yuendemu

Lily Hargraves Nungarrayi is a senior Warlpiri women born in the Tanami Desert around 1930. In the early 1950’s Nungarrayi moved to the settlement of Lajamanu, located at Hookers Creek, when the Warlpiri population at Yuendemu had outgrown that settlement’s ability to house all its occupants. She has continued to live at Lajamanu ever since.

Lily became a central figure in the painting movement that evolved at Lajamanu after 1985. Lily Nungarrayi has an outgoing personality, and has been strongly involved in women’s ceremonial practice and traditional law. Although now aged well into her 70’s, Lily is still keen on hunting bush food, and likes to go out regularly with family members to country around Lajamanu community.

Selected Exhibitions:

1987 Australian Made, Hogarth Galleries,Sydney
1989 Lajamanu Painters, Dreamtime Gallery, Perth
1990 Lajamanu Paintings, Shades of Ochre Gallery, Darwin
1990 Paint Up Big: Warlpiri Women’s Art of Lajamanu, National Gallery of Victoria
1991 Aboriginal Art and Spirituality, High Court, Canberra
1991 Lajamanu Dreamings 2, Technical and Further Education College, Darwin
1991 Ngurra Mala, les lieux du Reve, Ecole des beaux-arts, Grenoble, France
1991 Aboriginal Art, Australian Embassy, Washington, USA
1991 Yapa, Peintres Aborigenes de Balgo et Lajamanu, Baudoin Lebon Gallery, Paris
1992 Maintaining the Dreaming, University of Wollongong Long Gallery
1993 10th NATSIAA Telstra Art Awards, Museum &amp; Art Gallery of NT, Darwin
1994 Australian Aboriginal Art, Dettinger Mayer Gallery, Lyon and Toulouse, France
1996 The Rainbow Serpent, Sydney
1997 Lilly Hargraves, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne
1997 Lilly Hargraves, Batchelor College
2000 Lajamanu Warlpiri Artists, Yuwayi Gallery, Sydney (Olympic Games exhibition)
2000 Lajamanu, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2001 Warlpiri Artists from Lajamanu, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2001 Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide,
2001 Allison Kelly Gallery, Melbourne
2002 New Works from Lajamanu, Coo-ee Gallery, Sydney
2004 Yilpinji, Love, Magic and Ceremony, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2005 Across Skin- Women Artists of the Western Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle.

Region: Haasts Bluff

Lilly Kelly Napangardi is a senior law woman of the Mt Liebig community, in the Haasts Bluff area of the Northern Territory, 325 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs.

Lilly Kelly was born at Haasts Bluff in 1948. She moved to the newly established settlement of Papunya in the 1960’s. During her time there, Lilly began painting, notably assisting with works by her husband Norman Kelly. Lilly returned to Mt Liebig with her husband in the early 1980’s. Lilly began painting in her own right in the early 1980’s, winning the Northern Territory Art Award for painting in 1986, and the General Painting Category at the 20th NATSIAA Telstra awards in 2003.

Lilly holds authority over the Women’s Dreaming story associated with Kunajarrayi. She is now teaching younger women traditional dancing and singing associated with this Dreaming, and has become one of the senior Law Women of the community. Lilly has three children and eleven grandchildren.

Lilly’s paintings of country, especially the sandhills of the Kintore and Coniston areas, often depict the winds and the desert environment after rain. Her paintings can mark the seasonal changes in this sandy landscape, and the crucial waterholes found in the area. There is the finest microcosmic detail embedded into a macrocosmic view of the landscape. It is the ephemeral nature of the drifting, changing country that is Lilly Kelly’s key subject.

Selected Exhibitions:

2000-2003 Desert Mob Show, Alice Springs
2003 NATSIAA Telstra Awards
2003 Span Galleries, Melbourne
2004 Mary Place Gallery, Sydney
2005 Japingka Gallery, Fremantle

Region: Utopia

Teresa Purla is the daughter of Barbara Weir, and the granddaughter of the late Minnie Pwerle, both highly reputed Utopia artists. Teresa was born in Darwin in 1963, and spent a number of her early years living in Papunya with her mother and father.

In her adult life, Teresa has lived at various times in Adelaide and Perth. Today she lives in the community of Atnwengerrp, the traditional country of her mother and grandmother, on the Utopia homelands, north east of Alice Springs. Teresa currently serves on the Ampilatwitja Council, which has responsibilities for the surrounding communities.

Teresa began her painting career in 1990, under the tutelage of her mother Barbara. Her paintings are highly detailed, often multi- layered, and feature finely executed dot work. Teresas current paintings have an underlying influence from the series that her mother Barbara Weir created around My Mothers Country. This series reflects the strong familial ties to Anmatyerre culture of the Utopia region. The influence of grandmother Minnie Pwerle is seen more in the connections to the stories and ceremonies of Atnwengerrp country, rather than in the famous Awelye body painting gestures so closely associated with Minnies style.

Teresa Purlas paintings have been exhibited in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, as well as in Paris and Copenhagen. In 2006 Teresa exhibited 11 paintings alongside the work of Minnie Pwerle, in an exhibition titled Grandmother and Granddaughter, held at Japingka Gallery.

Region: Yuendumu

Dorothy Napangardi is a Warlpiri woman born in the early 1950s at Mina Mina, west of Mt Doreen and Yuendumu, in the Northern Territory. Dorothy Napangardi began painting ‘bush tucker’ designs in 1987 when her children were still quite young and well after she moved from her ancestral Warlpiri homelands into Alice Springs, where she has lived the greater part of her life.

Later Dorothy Napangardi began experimenting with her painting technique. This, along with visits back into her homelands in the 1990s, allowed her to refine her visual representation of her Jukurrpa (Dreamings) and stories associated with Mina Mina, culminating in the finely patterned, minimal paintings for which she is now so widely recognised.

Dorothy Napangardi’s  Jukurrpa includes Salt Pan images and Digging Stick Dreaming (Karnta-Kurlangu). In 2001, Napangardi won the coveted Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award for a black and white work, Salt on Mina Mina. In 2002, she was presented a major painting survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. Dorothy Napangardi’s innovative and distinctive painting style has earned her a reputation as one of the most important Aboriginal artists working today. Aboriginal art status – Highly collectable artist.

Region: Kanpi

Jimmy Baker (c.1915- 2010) was born along the Kalaya Tjukurrpa (Emu Dreaming) track in the Western Desert at the rockhole called Malumpa, close to the present day community of Kanpi. Jimmy’s family first encountered white settlers when a group of missionaries travelled by camel train from the mission at Ernabella to Warburton in Western Australia. The family initially took flight and hid, but eventually curiosity got the better of the family and they went to investigate.

When he was about 15, Jimmy Baker’s father met up with one of Professor Strehlow’s expeditions through Central Australia near Kanpi and Strehlow offered him tucker to help. In gratitude for Jimmy’s help, Strehlow gave the family a letter entitling them to access the stores at Ernabella. After some discussion, the family decided that ready access to food was an attractive option and moved to Ernabella.

Jimmy’s first job at Ernabella was grinding flour and making bread and damper, which is how he got his surname Baker. Jimmy met his wife and they moved back to Kenmore Park, a station near Ernabella where they raised their three children. After the mission days Jimmy, along with key family members, promoted the establishment of a community at Kanpi so that they could live back on their own country.

Jimmy Baker began painting in 2004, and his work quickly gained recognition amongst Aboriginal art collectors. In 2007, Jimmy Baker was a feature artist in the  Indigenous Art Triennial 2007: Culture Warriors Triennial exhibition’ at the National Gallery of Australia. In his later years Jimmy Baker was often assisted by his family when painting larger works. Aboriginal art status – Highly collectable artist.