Artists

Region: Utopia

Abie Loy Kemarre was born in 1972 on the Utopia homelands, 270 kms north east of Alice Springs. Her language is Eastern Anmatyerre and her ancestral country is Iylenty, also called Mosquito Bore. Abie Loy began painting in 1994 alongside her grandmother, esteemed senior Utopia Aboriginal artist Kathleen Petyarre.

Abie Loy established her reputation painting the detailed and finely dotted Bush Hen Dreaming, the story that she inherited from her Grandfather. These paintings, with their fixed structure overlaid with a floating field of tonally coloured dots, are classic Utopia artworks. From 2004 Abie Loy began working on paintings related to Sandhill and Body painting designs . These works are bolder and more open than the earlier works, often with strong linear structures.

Abie Loy  Kemarre has exhibited widely and has been a finalist in the Telstra NAATSIA art awards in 1997 and 2001. Her first exhibition at Japingka Gallery was held in 1997. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.

Region: Yuendumu

Alma Nungarrayi Granites is a Warlpiri artist from Yuendumu, the daughter of senior Aboriginal artists,Paddy Japaljarri Sims and Bessie Nakamarra Sims, both founding artists of Warlukurlangu Artists at Yuendumu.  Alma Granites acquired her cultural heritage from her aunties, mother and father and other family members. During visits to country the dances and songs associated with the Jukurrpa were performed, and the kurruwarri (designs) associated with each Jukurrpa, were made as drawings on the ground.

Alma  Nungarrayi Granites started painting in 1987, but in 2007 that she took the step to become a dedicated and accomplished artist. Her main concern was for the Jukurrpa, the design and stories passed onto her from her mother and her father. Alma explored unique ways of representing the traditional Jukurrpa using innovating painting techniques and designs while maintaining the traditional aspects of the iconography.

To expand her representation of the Jukurrpa, Alma studied the Seven Sisters Dreaming in depth through her father Paddy Japaljarri Sims. Visits to country created a stronger connection to the land where the story takes place – the large round rocks of Yanjirlpirri country create a powerful landscape where the sky and land melt into each other at night time. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.

Region: Utopia

Anna Petyarre is an eastern Anmatyerre woman, born at Utopia in 1960. Anna’s home is Atneltyeye, Boundary Bore, on the Utopia Homelands, approximately 220 km from Alice Springs. She lives there with her family. She is a grandmother with five grandchildren. Anna, whose mother was the late artist Glory Ngale, has painted since her early childhood. She is related to the esteemed Aboriginal artists Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Kudditji Kngwarreye through her grandfather, who was a brother of Emily and Kudditji’s father.

Anna Petyarre’s painting subjects include Bush Yam and Yam Seed Dreamings, which are associated Dreamings from her grandfather’s and father’s country at Atneltyeye, or Boundary Bore. As a traditional Aboriginal women involved in sacred ceremonies, Anna also paints Awelye- ceremonial body paint designs, related to women’s ceremony.

Anna’s more recent paintings have focused on images of her ancestral country, the finely delineated structures showing the terrain of the sandhill and bush country, often with markings that reveal waterholes and ceremonial sites. Anna Petyarre is renowned for her fine painting technique and for the care and pride she takes in her work, producing intricate and sensitive paintings that relate to the traditional culture of her Anmatyerre heritage. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Region: Utopia

Betty Mpetyane (also spelt Mbitjana) was born on Utopia station in 1957 in the era when the station was still run by non-indigenous owners. Later in 1979 a successful land claim hearing resulted in Utopia station being granted as permanent legal title of the leasehold to the community of traditional elders. The Utopia women played a key role in the negotiation of the land title.

Betty Mbitjana had grown up and spent her early years on the station mixing a traditional life with a western schooling. Betty Mbitjana is the daughter of acclaimed Aboriginal Utopia artist Minnie Pwerle, and is sister of Barbara Weir and niece of Emily Pwerle. As her mother Minnie Pwerle became more famous for her paintings, Betty developed an interest in painting and learned from Minnie’s innovative blending of colours.

Since her mother passed away in 2006, Betty Mbitjana ‘s career has developed in its own right, building on her acquired knowledge and developing her own methods of expression. Betty has taken on the many of the ceremonial stories painted by her late mother. Betty lives at Alparra Community on Utopia station. Aboriginal art status – Mid career artist.

Region: Wangkatjungka

Biddee Baadjo, a senior Wangkatjungka woman, was born around 1938, near Purrpurn waterhole, located in her ancestral country in the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia. When she was still a baby, she was snatched by an eagle from a coolamon, where she had been left sleeping by her mother when the family was out hunting. Her mother saw the eagle swoop away with the child, and chased after it. The eagle dropped Biddee into the spinifex grass, and her mother found her there crying.

During the 1940s Biddee Baadjo’s family joined the exodus of Wangkatjungka people who left the desert and travelled north towards the cattle station country of the Fitzroy Valley region.  Aboriginal people followed the Canning Stock Route towards Bililuna, or travelled north west following a trail of creek beds and waterholes, that headed towards Fitzroy Crossing.

Biddee Baadjo has lived and worked at Wangkatjungka Community, located adjacent to Christmas Creek station, between Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing. Aboriginal artists began painting in the community in 1994. Biddee lived there with her husband, fellow painter Luurn Willie Kew. Biddee Baadjo’s paintings relocate the significant waterholes and hunting areas that have been the province of her family for countless generations. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Selected Group Exhibitions

2004     Wangkatjungka Women, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA

2004     Jila & Tali – Waterholes and Sandhills, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra, ACT

2004     Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane, QLD

2004     Striking Colours of the Living Desert – Wangkatjungka Country, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney, NSW

2004     Artists of Wangkatjungka – Stories of Country, Raintree Gallery, Darwin, NT

2004     Tali and Jila, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA

2005     Artists of Wangkatjungka, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney, NSW

2005     Yirmpurr (Living Water) Recent Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT

2005     Wangkatjungka Artists, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney, NSW

2005     Wangkatjungka, Ladner and Fell Gallery, Melbourne, VIC

2005     Wangkatjungka Artists: Stories from The Great Sandy Desert, Tandanya, National Aboriginal Cultural

Institute Adelaide, SA

2006     Wangkatjungka Artists, Hogarth Galleries, Sydney, NSW

2006     Wangkatjungka – Artists of the Great Sandy Desert, Art Mob, Hobart, TAS

2006     Wangkatjungka Group Exhibition, Helen Maxwell, Canberra, ACT

2006                 Luminaries of the Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA

2007     Wangkatjungka Mapping Country, Japingka Gallery. Fremantle, WA

2007     Desert Mosaic, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA

2008     Wangkatjungka Artists: Canning Stock Route, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA

2009      Desert Rains – Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2009     Kids and Mentors, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

Solo Exhibitions

2009     Biddee Baadjo, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

Region: Haasts Bluff

Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri, (1920′s – 2008), was born at Pirupa Akla, country located near the Olgas and to the west of Ayers Rock. By the time he was a young man, most of Bill Whiskey’s family had passed away. Many of his people had begun moving towards Haasts Bluff mission, about 250 kms to the north east. Whiskey joined a group of Aboriginal people who were about to make that journey. No one had yet seen white people, and when they arrived at the mission, the desert people were completely naked.

Bill Whiskey, along with some of the others, decided not stay, as they were frightened when they saw white people for the first time. They eventually arrived at an area near Areyonga, where a white missionary Pastor had established a camp. It was here that Whiskey and the others first tasted white man food. Whiskey spent a little time with Patupirri before moving back to Haasts Bluff mission, where he met his wife, and so never returned to his home country.

Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri practiced as a traditional healer, and people would come from afar to be treated by him. He came to be called Whiskers, owing to his long white beard, and the name eventually evolved into Whiskey. Later in life Whiskey moved to an outstation at Amunturrungu, where he lived with his wife and children. Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri began painting in 2004. The main images in his works are the Rockholes near Pirupa, Ayers Rock, and the story of his own journeys to Areyonga and Haasts Bluff. Aboriginal art status – Highly collectable artist.

Region: Yinjaa Barni

Clifton Mack is an elder of the Yindjibarndi people whose country is around the Millstream Tablelands in Western Australia’s Pilbara district. Clifton was born in Roebourne in 1952 and began painting in 2001. Clifton Mack’s father was the revered Yindjibarndi Rainmaker, Long Mack, who carried the knowledge of water for his people.

Knowledge of water, its locations, seasons, and an intimate understanding of the freshwater-bringing serpent, Warlu, is a basic and fundamental tenet of Yindjibarndi lore. Much of Clifton’s work relates this mindset of water and how it flows through Yindjibarndi country. Clifton experiments boldly with colour, often using complementary colours to create a different dimension to his work, and taps into non-traditional painting styles to further explore his ideas through art. Clifton Mack was selected to visit Italy in 2006 as part of the Antica Terra Pulsante exhibition in Florence. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Region: Wangkatjungka

Senior Aboriginal artists at Wangkatjungka Community have been painting together since 1994. The majority of the artists grew up on their ancestral lands in the Great Sandy Desert and were children when their parents joined the great exodus of families out of the Western Desert areas. Their families first contact with white settlers was in 1906 when the Canning Stock Route was being surveyed through their traditional country.

Wangkatjungka people moved to their community after a long exodus that took many of them through Balgo Hills, Halls Creek and the Fitzroy Valley cattle station country. The record of Aboriginal family ownership of groups of waterholes in the Great Sandy Desert is embedded in the knowledge and Dreaming law of Wangkatjungka people. Several waterholes were claimed by the Canning Stock Route builders and have had wells excavated next to them. Others are in more remote country and only knowledge by the traditional owners allows them to be mapped and connected to other waterholes.

The paintings can be seen as statements of connection between the traditional owners and the neighbourhood of chains of waterholes that underpinned life for Wangkatjungka people of the Great Sandy Desert. The senior Wangkatjungka artists include Biddee Baadjo, Elsie Thomas (dec.), George Tuckerbox, Nada Rawlins, Nora Tjookootja, Penny K Lyons, Rosie Goodjie and Willie Kew. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artists.

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: Alice Springs

Douglas Kwarlpe Abbott was born in Hermannsburg and spent his early years on the banks of the Finke River, south of Alice Springs. He remembers as a child going to Hermannsburg every Christmas. Douglas was later raised in Alice Springs by his parents Gordon and Joyleen Abbott. Douglas’s paternal grandmother’s place is at Waterhouse, near Hermannsburg, at the end of the James Range and the Waterhouse Range.

Iconic Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira was Douglas Kwarlpe’s classificatory grandfather. As a young boy Douglas used to watch Albert Namatjira, his cousin, Clem Abbott, and other members of the original Hermannsburg watercolour artists, as they painted. Clem advised Douglas to find his own painting style and to develop it, which he has done with great success.

Douglas Kwarlpe Abbott is an extremely prolific painter and very inventive, sometimes combining landscape with symbolic forms. Douglas’s paintings are characterised by an intensity of colour, where detail is contained within simple bold shapes. He constructs a spiritual world, which appears both timeless and of the moment. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Region: Roper River

Edward Blitner was born in southern Arnhemland in 1961. His bush name is Taiita. In the early years he lived at Ngukurr Community on the Roper River in the Northern Territory. Later he attended school at Concordia College in Adelaide until the age of sixteen. When he returned to the north as a young man he worked as a stockman and general hand on Victoria River Downs. He was at the Gurrinji walkout when he was a youth, and mixed with all of the language groups who populate the northern country from Roper River to Kununurra.

This part of the country remained home for the next thirty years. Blitner has lived for periods of time at Katherine, Victoria River, Kununurra, Fitzroy Crossing and Broome. Blitner learned painting from his grandfather who painted with natural ochres on bark. While he worked on the paintings his grandfather told his grandchildren of the related Dreaming stories and taught the appropriate songs and dance cycles.

Edward Blitner uses the styles and subject matter of his traditional country in southern Arnhemland. He maintains the palette of natural ochre colours and often includes the traditional patterning of cross hatching referred to as rrarrk . He also works as a sculptor and wood carver

Region: Haasts Bluff

Eileen Napaltjarri is a significant second generation Aboriginal  artist of the Western Desert movement. Eileen was born in the Haasts Bluff community in December 1956 to the late Charlie Tararu Tjungurrayi, one of the founding members of Papunya Tula Artists, who forged a longstanding and innovative artistic career. Her mother, Tatali Nangala, was another accomplished and prolific painter. Eileen is the wife of leading Kintore artist, Kenny Williams Tjampitjinpa.

Eileen Napaltjarri moved from Haasts Bluff to Kintore with her family after the outstation was first established there in the early 1980s. She often sat beside her parents as they painted. In 1999, after the death of her mother, Eileen began to paint her own stories. Her “rhythmically abstract paintings”, wrote journalist Nicolas Rothwell reviewing a Papunya Tula women’s show in Alice Springs in late 2006, “have become the newest sign of the inventiveness of Kintore women.”

The main site that Eileen refers to in her painting is her father’s birthplace, Tjitjurrulnga (also known as Titjurrulpa), a rockhole to the west of Kintore. She depicts this with parallel and arching lines of sandhill country, which meet and diverge down the canvas, occasionally disrupted with openings and waterholes. Her distinct palette of rich and vibrant colours reverberates with tonal intensity. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Region: Balgo

Eubena (Yupinya) Nampitjin (1920s-2013) was one of the best known of the Warlayirti Artists from Balgo Hills, in the north of Western Australia. Eubena was born at Tjinndjaldpa, south of Jupiter Well in the Great Sandy Desert, and was taught maparn, or traditional healing skills, as a young girl by her mother, Mukaka.

Eubena Nampitjin lived a nomadic life with her family in their ancestral country, hunting, performing ceremonies and law for the maintenance of their country and for their own spiritual well-being. It was a harsh life and gradually the extended family dispersed, many going west to the outstation of Jigalong. Eubena married Tjapaltjarrri Gimme, and with their family then went droving along the Canning Stock Route, before settling at Billiluna Station, 220 km south of Halls Creek.

When the Aboriginal painting movement spread from Central Australia to the remote outpost of Balgo in the 1980s, it was the men who began to paint first, and Eubena began by collaborating with her second husband Wimmitji Tjapanardi. Their work shared a luminous and intricate complexity along with a love of the warm reds, oranges and yellows that continue to be Eubena’s signature today.

The major Dreaming stories depicted by Eubena Nampitjin in her work are from the Tingari (Ancestral women) cycle and the Wati Kutjarra (Two Men Dreaming). Other themes in her paintings include Tjumu (soak water), Tjukarra (rock holes), Malu (Kangaroo Dreaming), Bush Tomato, Goanna, Mouse, Moon and Dingo Dreaming. Aboriginal art status – Iconic artist.

Region: Unknown

Freddie Timms was given the bush name, Ngarrmaliny, after the place he was born at, Police Hole, around 1946 on the East Kimberley cattle station of Bedford Downs. Growing up on station properties, Freddie Timms learned all the riding and stock handling skills at an early age. He worked on most of the surrounding stations, including Bedford Downs, Lissadell, Mabel Downs, Old Argyle, Texas Downs and Bow River Station.

After the stockmen’s dispute in the seventies, which resulted in the removal of many Aboriginal people from their homelands, Freddie Timms lived in the Guda-Guda Community at Wyndham, after which he and his family relocated to Warmun/Turkey Creek in 1985. Bow River Station was eventually granted by the Government to the Timms family, with Freddie’s uncle, the late Timmy Timms, as Chairperson.

Freddie Timms and his wife Beryline Mung live at the tiny community of Frog Hollow where Freddie paints his stories. He started painting in the late 1980s, using the knowledge and techniques that he had acquired by working and talking with the best of the Aboriginal artists at Warmun, such as Jack Britten, Hector Jandanay, Henry Wambini, Rover Thomas and his father-in-law, Paddy Jaminji. Freddie Timms’ representations of country are mainly based on real topographical features rather than mythological ones, often focusing on the landscape’s history and changes since white settlement. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.

Region: Utopia

Galya Pwerle was born in the 1930s, the youngest of a family of six girls, including one of Australia’s most acclaimed Aboriginal artists, the late Minnie Pwerle. Galya started painting in 2004, along with two of her other sisters, Molly Pwerle and Emily Pwerle, who are the aunts of the renowned painter, Barbara Weir. It was Barbara who encouraged her three aunts to take up the brush and paint their stories. The three sisters live at Irrultja, a small Utopia settlement which is home to about one hundred people.
One of the main subjects of Galya’s paintings is the grass Portulaca oleracea, a traditional bush food for Aboriginal people in the area. The tiny black seed produced by the grass has been a vital food source for the indigenous people, who use the seeds in a number of ways – ground down to make flour for bread or biscuits, or mixed with water to make a cordial for drinking.
These grass seeds are the subject of one of the Dreaming stories that have been passed down by the Pwerle sisters’ ancestors. Galya Pwerle learned about the seeds as she sat with the old people and watched them draw the story on the ground. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Region: Wangkatjungka

George Tuckerbox was born in the late 1930′s near Naminpa country, in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. He grew up in country around Yimpurrpa, but then his family joined the exodus that saw large groups of Aboriginal people leaving the desert and travelling north. During this difficult journey, George’s father passed away at Nampinpa, and then his mother at Tangku.

When George was about 12 or 13 years old he arrived at Christmas Creek station. Already he had family there – his sister Ngamapu Napangardi, had come to collect him. The station manager sent him on to Yeeda Station, where he learned the skills of station life. He then returned to Christmas Creek as a stockman. In order to travel around in those days, George would either walk or ride a donkey. As a stockman, George drove bullocks across the Tanami Desert, from Balgo to Alice Springs, and worked on many of the cattle stations along the way.

Today George Tuckerbox lives at Wangkatjungka Community, adjacent to Christmas Creek station. He produced his first paintings there in the 1990s. In 1987 George was one of the Wangkatjungka elders who travelled from Fitzroy Crossing to Tokyo, to present the Kurtal ceremonial dance and song cycle, that was part of an art exhibition and cultural performance staged in central Tokyo. George’s paintings represent the country where he grew up, the waterholes and hunting grounds belonging to his ancestors. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Selected Exhibitions:

2003     Artists of Wangkajungka, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2004     Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane
2004     Striking Colours of the Living Desert, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney
2004     Artists of Wangkatjungka, Raintree Gallery, Darwin
2004     Tali and Jila, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2005     Artists of Wangkatjungka, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney
2005     Wangkatjungka Artists, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney
2005     Big Country Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs
2005     Wangkatjungka, Ladner and Fell Gallery, Melbourne
2006     Wangkatjungka – Artists of the Great Sandy Desert, ART MOB, Hobart
2007     Wangkatjungka Mapping Country, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA
2007     Desert Mosaic, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA
2008     Wangkatjungka Artists: Canning Stock Route, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA

2013     Landmarks and Law Grounds: Men of the Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

Region: Kintore

George Ward Tjungurrayi was born around 1947 in the Western Desert near the remote West Australian community of Tjukurrla. His father had died when he was young, and it was not until his teenage years that George first met with white settlers. This meeting occurred when a welfare patrol encountered his family group which had camped by a desert waterhole.

George Ward Tjungurrayi later travelled east to the government settlement at Papunya. There he worked as a fencer and a butcher in the community kitchen. He married Nangawarra, and moved to Warburton, then Docker River, Warakurna and finally to the newly established outstation at Kintore.

George Ward Tjungurrayi began painting in the early 1990s at Kintore. In 1998 with the passing of his brother, famous Aboriginal artist Yala Yala Gibbs, a founding member of the Papunya Tula desert art movement, a degree of important cultural responsibility passed across to George. He developed a distinctive painting style with dense parallel line structures marked out with shimmering rows of dotting.

George Ward Tjungurrayi’s large scale works depict the ancestral desert narratives relating to the country west of Kintore and the region around Lake MacDonald. Often the stories describe journeys taken by the Tingari ancestors as they moved through the landscape, transforming into the structures of the landscape. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.

Reference: “Going to the source”, The Australian, 20 April 2004, Nicolas Rothwell

Region: Utopia

Gloria Petyarre was born on Utopia in Central Australia around 1945. Her language is Anmatyerre and her country is Atnangkere. Gloria Petyarre is one of seven sisters who are well known Aboriginal artists, including Kathleen Petyarre, Nancy Petyarre, Violet Petyarre and Ada Bird. Gloria lives at Mulga Bore (Akaye Soakage) on the Utopia homelands.

Gloria Petyarre, like many of the Aboriginal artists in Utopia, first gained recognition with the women artists working with batik. In 1988, Gloria began painting and her first work was shown in the exhibition “Utopia Women’s Painting; The First Works of Canvas; a Summer Project 1988 to 1989.”

Gloria Petyarre’s work is based on the body paint designs for her Dreamings, which include Mountain Devil, Bush Medicine, Aknangkere Growth, and Awelye Dreamings. Her earlier works show the designs painted across the women’s breasts and shoulders. Bush Medicine Dreaming depicts the leaves of a particular type of shrub that has medicinal qualities, and Gloria Petyarre uses a range of different brush strokes to represent the growth of the leaves at certain times of the year. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.

Region: Daly River

Helen McCarthy Tyalmuty was born at Tennant Creek in 1972. She spent most of her childhood at Nauiyu Nambiyu Community at Daly River, about 230 kms south of Darwin. Later Helen went to study teaching, completing her degree at Deakin University in 1994. During her time at university Helen’s art career began to take shape, and by 1993 she was already involved in her first art festival.

Helen’s painting continued to develop after moving into teaching full time, and for ten years she successfully combined a job as a teacher in remote communities with her painting activities. Helen McCarthy Tyalmuty had her first solo exhibition in 2006. In 2007, Helen received the People’s Choice Award at the 24th Telstra Aboriginal Art Awards for her painting Tyemeny Liman’s Wutinggi (Grandpa Harry’s Canoe).

Helen McCarthy Tyalmuty says of her grandfather: “In his day he was the best canoe maker in his country. It’s a sad story and a good story at the same time. It’s the last canoe that he ever made.”  Tyalmuty’s grandfather stopped making canoes when he heard that education would help his children. He left his country with a heavy heart and sent his children to school on the Cox Peninsula. Helen devotes herself to painting full time and is recognised as one of Australia’s most innovative Aboriginal artists. She spends her time in the community at Balgul and with her family in Darwin, where she has a son and four sisters. Aboriginal art status – Highly collectable artist.

Region: Kimberley

Jack Dale Mengenen (c1920- 2013) was born in the bush at Mt House Station, in the west Kimberley. His early life was marked by the experience of conflict between different cultures. Jack’s Aboriginal mother, a Ngarinyin woman, tried to keep her son from his violent white father. Jack Dale Senior was a wild Scotsman renowned for his harsh uncompromising character, who once shot his own son in the leg to stop him from running away.

On the death of his father, Jack returned to his maternal family and was brought into traditional Aboriginal Ngarinyin Law by his maternal grandfather. His traditional country is Imanji, located near Mt House Station. Jack went on to lead a remarkable life that bridged both cultures. He was a highly regarded head stockman and bushman, as well as a respected tribal elder and lawman.

Jack Dale Mengenen began painting in the 1990′s, working with traditional ochre pigments. He has made large ceremonial boards used by traditional dancers to re-enact Dreaming stories. He has used his extensive cultural knowledge to record aspects of the Wandjina Dreaming sites of his people. He has also recorded his own memories from a long life lived at the frontier of Kimberley life, recalling the historical changes he had witnessed. These have included the arrival of afghan camel drivers, the enforced captivity of aboriginal workers, the conflicts between whites and blacks, the work of missionaries, and other sometimes humorous memories from life in the stock camps.

Jack Dale Mengenen said “That’s why I know every Wandjina my grandfather showed me, you can only put your Wandjinas in paintings, nobody else’s, that’s all. “Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.

Selected Exhibitions:

2000    Jack Dale – Senior Law Man, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne VIC

2001    Kimberley Works, Burrinja Gallery, Melbourne VIC

2001    Jack Dale- Djumba Ceremonies, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne VIC

2001    Wandjina, Coo-ee Gallery, Sydney NSW

2002    Jack Dale – Kimberley History, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne VIC

2003    Jack Dale, Kintolai Gallery, Adelaide SA

2004    Jack Dale, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne VIC

2004    Jack Dale- Narrungunni Dreamplaces, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2006    Jack Dale – A Kimberley History, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2006    Jack Dale, Coo-ee Gallery, Sydney NSW

2006    Jack Dale, Framed Gallery, Darwin NT

2007   The Stockman & the Medicine Man: Jack Dale & Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri,

Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2011   Jack Dale Mengenen, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle  WA

Region: Wangkatjungka

Jill Jack (bush name Tjunjun) was born at Christmas Creek around 1955. Her parents had been part of the large desert migrations of the 1940′s and 1950′s, where people moved north towards the cattle station country of the Fitzroy Valley.

Jill’s mother came from Japingka Waterhole in Walmajarri country, and had traveled north with her first, older husband. Her father came from Wirnpa in Wangkajunga country, and traveled via the Canning Stock Route to Balgo, before moving west to Christmas Creek.

Jill grew up with two brothers at Christmas Creek, where she worked for a time at the station homestead. Her children, two daughters, have also lived all their lives at Christmas Creek, which became the location where Wankatjungka Community was established during the 1980′s.

Jill Jack began painting in 2003 for the Wangkatjungka Arts Project organised by Japingka Gallery. Jill paints elements of her ancestral homelands through stories she has inherited from her mother and father’s country. Jill’s work has generated a great deal of interest right from her earliest paintings, based largely on her harmonious use of colour and assured technique.

Selected Exhibitions:

2004 Jila & Tali – Waterholes and Sandhills, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT
2004 Striking Colours of the Living Desert – Wankatjungka Country, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney, NSW
200 4 Artists of Wangkatjungka – Stories of Country, Raintree Gallery, Darwin, NT
2004 Tali and Jila, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
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
2005 Wangkatjunka Artists: Stories from The Great Sandy Desert, Tandanya, National Aboriginal Cultural Institute Adelaide, SA

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.

Region: Unknown

Jimmy Pike (c1940 – 2002) was born in the Great Sandy Desert south of the Fitzroy River Valley region in Western Australia. He was a member of the Walmajarri people, and his clan was one of the last Aboriginal groups to leave the desert to settle on the cattle station country in the Kimberley during the 1950s. His childhood was spent in a nomadic lifestyle, moving with his family between the various waterholes that were the focal points of their arid country. This country with its ancient culture and symbols were to become the source that inspired Jimmy Pike’s paintings later in life.

Jimmy Pike’s paintings from the 1980s and 1990s showed the physical and spiritual quality of his traditional Walmajarri country, and added a new dynamism to the central positions of landscape in Australian art. The artist’s themes of the intricacies of desert landscape, the visual character of the changing seasons and the particularities of its Aboriginal spirituality have transformed this extremely isolated area of the northern part of Australia into a tangible experience. Jimmy Pike is represented in the collections of major Australian public galleries and museums.

“My work is painting and drawing, telling stories from the Dreamtime and about places where Dreamtime people travelled through my country. They set down the Law for real people today, wherever they are. Thats what I paint”  Aboriginal art status – Highly collectable artist.

Region: Unknown

Jock Mosquito is a senior Jaru man, and was born around 1944 on Nicholson Station in the East Kimberley, along the desert country south of Kununurra. He spent his working life based at Nicholson, and like other Aboriginal stockmen of his day, mustered on surrounding stations. He did not know his mother – his father and grandmother “grew him up”. He had the opportunity to go to Beagle Bay for schooling, but his father and grandmother did not wish him to go. Later Jock married Doreen, a Kitja woman, and they have six boys, two girls and thirty-two grandchildren. They are a close family unit.

Jock Mosquito is a desert Aboriginal artist painting successfully in ochre – as was the late Rover Thomas, with whom Jock worked as a stockman. Jock assisted in painting the Kuril Kuril (dancing) boards for Rover’s corroboree, alongside the senior ochre artists Jack Britten, Hector Jandany, George Mung Mung and Churchill Cann. These men are regarded as the cultural leaders and custodians of the Kitja country and surrounds.

Always a strong artist, after suffering a stroke in early 2005, Jock developed a more minimal style, with the content of his works leaning towards landscape rather than some of the intricate desert designs he executed previously. Jock Mosquito clearly states that what he paints is his country – the country for which he is traditional elder, and the country that he has lived and worked in all his life. These places are significant sites in the artist’s life and significant sites in the geography of the East Kimberley and adjacent desert country. Jock Mosquito paintings are represented in the National Gallery of Australia and in numerous private collections. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Region: Unknown

 

Jorna Newberry is a Pitjantjatjara artist, born around 1959 at Angus Downs in the Northern Territory. Jorna lives between the communities of Warakurna and Irrunytju and the township of Alice Springs where she has family. In travelling from the remote communities to the town, Jorna continues to live both the traditional Aboriginal culture of her indigenous background and the contemporary culture of modern Australia.

Jorna Newberry is the niece of famous Aboriginal artist Tommy Watson. When visiting her lands she regularly goes bush with the women of her community to participate in traditional ceremonies.

Jorna began painting in mid 1990s at Warakurna, and later joined painters at the Irrunytju Art Centre.

Over recent years Jorna has worked closely alongside her legendary uncle, Tommy Watson. She follows his instruction to favour abstraction as a stylistic means to ensure secrecy of important indigenous cultural matters, rather than taking a more figurative approach. Aboriginal art status – Rising Star.

Region: Unknown

Judy Napangardi Watson was born at Yarungkanji, Mt Doreen Station, around 1935, at the time when many Warlpiri and other Central Desert Aboriginal people were living a traditional nomadic lifestyle. With her family Judy Napangardi made many trips on foot to her country and lived for long periods at Mina Mina and Yingipurlangu, her ancestral country on the border of the Tanami and Gibson Deserts. These places are rich in bush tucker such as wanakiji, bush plums, yakajirri, bush tomatoes, and wardapi, sand goanna. Judy Watson still frequently goes hunting in the country west of Yuendumu, near her homelands.

Judy Napangardi Watson was taught painting by her elder sister, famous Aboriginal artist Maggie Napangardi Watson. She painted alongside her at Warlukurlangu Art centre for a number of years, developing her own unique style.

Though a tiny woman Judy Watson has had ten children, and is a woman of great energy. This is transmitted to her work through her dynamic use of colour, and energetic  ‘dragged dotting’ style. Judy Napangardi Watson has been at the forefront of a move towards more abstract rendering of Jukurrpa by Warlpiri artists, however her work retains strong kurruwarri, the details which tell of the sacredness of place and song in Aboriginal culture. Aboriginal art status – Highly collectable artist.

Region: Utopia

June Bird Ngale was born c1954 at Waite River in the Northern Territory and later moved with her family to the outstation at Mulga Bore on the Utopia Homelands. Her father, Tommy Bird Mpetyane, passed away early in her life, and she came to call Lindsay Bird Mpetyane her father. Her mother, highly regarded Aboriginal artist Ada Bird Petyarre, had six children.

When the Utopia Women’s batik group was established in the late 1970s, June Bird Ngale and her mother Ada Bird were involved from the beginning. Then in 1988 the Utopia artists began painting with CAAMA’s Summer Project and a great burgeoning of artistic output began. June says- “all family living at Mulga Bore, all painting, all the time. “

From her mother’s side, June Bird has received the women’s ceremonial body paint designs, usually associated with the Arnkerrethe, Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming for Atnungkerre and Alhalkerre Country. Ada Bird shared this story with all her sisters – Kathleen Petyarre, Gloria Petyarre, Myrtle Petyarre, Violet Petyarre, Nancy Petyarre and Jean Petyarre.

One of June’s painting subjects is the Alpar plant, which she describes as being from her Grandfather’s Dreaming. The small plant is celebrated by Aboriginal people for its food value and its medicinal powers. The paintings are reminiscent of her mother’s mysterious paintings of sacred grass created in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Aboriginal art status – Mid career artist.

Region: Utopia

Kudditji Kngwarreye was born about 1928 at Alhalkere at Utopia Station, located about 270 kms north east of Alice Springs. His language is Eastern Anmatyerre. He is the younger brother of the renowned Aboriginal artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye, and he began painting in the early 1980′s.

Kudditji Kngwarreye  is a custodian for ceremonial sites located on his country on the Utopia homelands, and many of his paintings refer to sites at Boundary Bore, where men’s initiation ceremonies are performed.

Today Kudditji mainly paints Emu Dreaming, for which he is cultural custodian, and Men’s Ceremonial Dreamings from Boundary Bore. Kudditji Kngwarreye is represented in major national and international collections and has gained worldwide recognition for his powerful interpretations of his ancestral Dreamings. Aboriginal art status – Highly collectable artist.

Region: Kalumburu

Lily Karadada (also spelt Karedada) was born in the Prince Regent River area on the Mitchell Plateau, on the north west area of the Kimberley coast of Western Australia. Her parents were Wunumbal language group, and Lily’s birthplace was Wumbango Wangurr in her Father’s country, where images of the Wandjina and Bradshaw figures are found at significant sites and rock shelters. Lily was born in the bush next to a spring, and so her father named her Mindindel, which means ‘bubbles’ .

At the time of the second World War, the young Lily and husband Jack, had made the long walk to the mission settlement at Kalumburu, which was coming under bombing attack by the Japanese. So they lived in a cave for many months on the outskirts, before finally settling back into the mission community.

Lily Karadada specializes in painting the Wandjina spirit with various totems including rain storm (dotting depicting rain generated by the Wandjina), lightning, turtle, owl nightjar and cave springwater. A dotted ground is also characteristic of Lily’s depictions of totemic species and the natural features of her country. Lily Karadada has lived all her life at Kalumburu with her large extended family, who are amongst the most consistent and longest practising Aboriginal artists from this region. Aboriginal art status – Iconic artist.

Region: Haasts Bluff

Linda Syddick Napaltjarri is a Pintupi Aboriginal artist who was born at Lake MacKay in the Gibson Desert, WA, in 1937. Her Aboriginal name is Tjunkiya Wukula Napaltjarri. Linda was raised in the traditional nomadic fashion until the age of eight or nine, when her family walked out of the desert and decided to settle at the Lutheran Mission at Haasts Bluff in Central Australia.

Linda Napaltjarri’s paintings are inspired by both her traditional nomadic life in the desert, and the Dreamings of her father and step-father. Linda’s father was Rintje Tjungurrayi who was killed by a revenge spearing party when Linda was about eighteen months old. Linda Syddick Napaltjarri was subsequently brought up by her stepfather, reknown Aboriginal artist Lankata Shorty Tjungurrayi. Before Shorty Lankata died in 1985, he instructed Linda to carry on his work and paint his Dreamings. And so it was that in 1986 Linda Syddick Napaltjarri was taught the art of painting by her two Uncles Uta Uta Tjangala and Nosepeg Tjupurrula.

Linda Syddick Napaltjarri often paints the Dreaming story of the Tingari and the Emu Men. The Emu Men were ancestral beings who roamed the landscape during the Dreamtime or Creation Period. Linda paints country mostly around Lake MacKay, which has been central to the cultural and spiritual life of the Aboriginal people for thousands of years. Lake MacKay was where Linda was born and travelled for most of her early childhood. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.

Region: Lajamanu

Lorna Napurrula Fencer (c1923- 2006) was a senior Warlpiri Aboriginal artist, born at Yartulu Yartulu, and custodian of inherited lands of Yumurrpa, situated near Chilla Well, south of the Granites Mine area in the Tanami Desert. In 1949 many of the Warlpiri people, including Lorna Napurrula were forcibly transported to the government settlement of Lajamanu at Hookers Creek, situated in the country of the Gurindji people, 250 miles to the north of their own country around Yuendumu. Napurrula nevertheless maintained and strengthened her cultural identity through ceremonial activity and art, and asserted her position as a prominent elder and teacher in the community.

The travels of Napurrula and Nakamarrra kinship or skin groups are the inspiration for Lorna Napurrula’s work, and she was a custodian of the Dreamings associated with bush potato (yarla), caterpillar (luju), bush onion, yam, bush tomato, bush plum, many different seeds, and (importantly) water. Lorna Napurrula Fencer began her painting career in the mid 1980s.

 

The passing of this major Aboriginal artist Lorna Napurrula Fencer in 2006 marked the end of a breathtaking flourish of artistic output in the seventh and eighth decades of the artist’s life. The artists is represented in the Australian National Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, other State Galleries and major private collections. Aboriginal art status – Iconic artist.

 

 

 

Selected Exhibitions

 

1991     Aboriginal Art, Australian Embassy, Washington USA

1991     Paint Up Big:  Warlpiri Women’s Art from Lajamanu, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne VIC

1991     Aboriginal Art and Spirituality, High Court of Australia, Canberra ACT

1994     Yapakurlangu Wirrkardu, Batchelor College, Tennant Creek NT

1996     All About Art, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne VIC

1997     Women’s Body Paint, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne VIC

1997     Recent Acquisitions, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne VIC

1997     Me Warlpiri, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne VIC

1997/8  John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne VIC

1998     Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra ACT

1998     Yulyulu, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne VIC

1998     6th Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Exhibition Building, Melbourne VIC

1998     Warnayaka Warlpiri, Karen Brown Gallery, Darwin NT

1988     People, Place and Art, Hilton International Hotel, Adelaide SA

1998     Wild Warlpiri Women, Coo-ee Aboriginal Art Gallery, Sydney NSW

1999     Paintings from Lajamanu Community, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

1999     Brit’s Art & Promotion, Jülich, Gondwana Gallerie, Rome Italy

1999     Tjinyipjila-Australian Message, Washington USA

1999     Yapa

1999     Love, Magic, Erotics & Politics in Indigenours Art, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney

1999     Indigenious Art of the Dreamtime, United Nations Buildings, New York USA

2000     Brit’s Art & Promotion, Jülich, Germany;  Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Köln;  UFA-Factory, Berlin

2000     Expo 2000, Australian Pavillion, Hannover

2000     Australian Night in Berlin

2000     Artists of Lajamanu, Tanami Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2000     Indigenous Artists Exhibition, Yuwayi Gallery, Sydney, NSW

2001     Brit’s Art & Promotion, Düsseldorf; State Museum for Nature and Man, Oldenburg; Quellenhof- Dorint Hotel, Aachen, Germany

2001     Little Gems, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2002     Jinta Jungu  – Museum for Natural History, Humbold-University, Berlin, Germany

2002     Art & Communication, Vodafone – Ratingen

2002     Lorna Napurrula Fencer – Powerful New Paintings from the Tanami Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2002     Lorna Napurrula Fencer – The Big Picture, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne VIC

2002     Lorna Fencer – Inner Spring – New Works from the Tanami

2003     Serenitiy – Past and Present, Walsrode

2003     Lorna Napurrula  Fencer,  Chapman Galleries, Canberra ACT

2003     Lorna Napurrula Fencer – Paintings 2003, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne VIC

2003     Lorna Napurrula Fencer –New Paintings, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2003     Big Country (Group Exhibition) – Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs NT

- Mary Place Gallery, Sydney NSW

2004     Divas of the Desert Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs NT

2004     Big Country, Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs NT

2004     Yumurlpa,  Gow Langsford Gallery, Sydney NSW

2004     Telstra Awards – Finalist, Darwin NT

2005     Lorna Napurrula Fencer, Hogarth Galleries, Sydney NSW

2005     Divas of the Desert, Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs NT

2005     Lorna Napurrula Fencer- Yumurrpa – Paintings 2005, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne VIC

2006     Luminaries of the Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2007     Lorna Napurrula Fencer – A Tribute, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2008     Women’s Law, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2011     Yulyurlu: Lorna Fencer Napurrula, Australian National University, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra ACT

2012     Heirs and Successors, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2012     The Colourists: Kudditji Kngwarreye & Lorna Napurrula Fencer , Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

Region: Pintupi

Maisie Campbell Napaltjarri is a Pintupi Aboriginal artist, born in 1958 near Haasts Bluff (Ikuntji). She grew up at Papunya and attended school there, and later moved west to the community of Kintore on the Western Australian – Northern Territory border. She married Barney Campbell Tjakamarra (1928- 2007), a senior Pintupi lawman and painter of the Tingari cycle from the Lake MacDonald region, and has two daughters.

Maisie Campbell Napaltjarri began painting in the early 1990s, initially by helping her husband with his work. The family had to relocate to Alice Springs where Barney received treatment at the Dialysis Unit. Maisie lived in Alice Springs for many years with family, but has now moved back to her community at Kintore.

Maisie Napaltjarri’s father was a Ngaatjatjarra speaker and her mother a Luritja speaker. Maisie often paints her father’s country at Warmarrungle near Kaarku. The major themes represented in Maisie’s paintings are the sacred rockholes and significant women’s ceremonies, referred to as minyma inmaku, that take place in the Western Desert between Kintore in the Northern Territory and Kiwirrkurra in Western Australia. Maisie’s ability to produce traditional designs associated with creation stories demonstrates her commitment to preserving these highly important elements of aboriginal culture. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.

Region: Kintore

Makinti Napanangka (1932- 2011) was a senior Pintupi Aboriginal artist, who lived at Kintore Community and in her final years in Alice Springs. Makinti began painting in 1995 as a member of the Haasts Bluff – Kintore painting project conducted at Kintore. Makinti quickly developed her own style and maintained her individual look throughout, painting continuously from 1995, aside from an enforced break due to a cataract operation in 1998.

Makinti Napanangka ‘s paintings are often the stories of the Kungka Kutjarra (Two Women), Ancestor figures whose travels cover great distances from Pitjantjajara country, then north east through to and beyond Haasts Bluff and Papunya. Such journeys include numerous ceremonial sites, ceremonial activities and food gathering.

Makinti’s images often comprise hairstring skirts, these skirts are woven by the women from human hair using a simple spindle made of two sticks, and belts worn by women in ceremonies. Makinti did not concern herself with neatness, or the painstaking ‘dot by dot’ approach. Her bands of lines can form into arcs, and create patterns that twist and bend. She is very different from all her Aboriginal art contemporaries. Makinti Napanangka’s work is represented in major public and private collections. Aboriginal art status – Highly collectable artist.

Region: Unknown

Maureen Nampijinpa Hudson is a Warlpiri Aboriginal artist, born in 1959 at Mt Allan, about 300 kms north of Alice Springs. She began painting in 1988. Maureen Nampijinpa Hudson’s paintings draw on traditional Warlpiri Dreaming stories, and incorporate her own distinctive sense of colour and innovation of design. Maureen’s passion in life is painting, and this shows in the diversity of style and high quality that she produces. Maureen Nampijinpa Hudson is very family orientated, and enjoys sitting and painting with her children.

Maureen resides in Adelaide but frequently visits family and friends in Mount Allan and Alice Springs. In recent years Maureen has been working as an Artist in Residence at Yulara (Uluru) for four week periods. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Region: Utopia

Minnie Pwerle (c1910 – 2006), a prolific and expressive Aboriginal artist, was born on the Utopia homelands, about 250 kms north-east of Alice Springs. Her country is Atnwengerrp and her language is Anmatyerre and Alyawarr. Minnie Pwerle made her first paintings at Utopia Community in September 1999 when she was in her late 80′s.

The artist’s main Dreamings are “Awelye-Atnwengerrp” (Women’s Dreaming), “Bush Melon”, and “Bush Melon Seed”. These convey her love and respect for the land and the food it provides to the people. “Awelye-Atnwengerrp” is depicted as a series of lines painted in different widths and colours. This pattern represents the lines painted on the top half of the women’s bodies during ceremonies in their country of Atnwengerrp.

“Bush Melon” is depicted using a linear design of curves, circles, and breast designs in different colours. “Bush Melon Seed” is big and small patches of colour strewn across the canvas. Both these Dreamings tell the story of the sweet food that comes from a small bush and is only found in Atnwengerrp. Once very abundant and fruiting in the summer season, the bush melon is now very hard to find. Aboriginal art status – Highly collectable artist.

Region: Haasts Bluff

Mitjili Napurrula is a Pintupi artist from the Haasts Bluff region, located 200 km west of Alice Springs. She was born about 1945 and is half sister to the famous Aboriginal artist Turkey Tjupurrula Tolson. She married Long Tom Tjapanangka at Papunya in the 1960′s, and they later lived at Haasts Bluff and Mt Liebeg.

Mitjili’s distinctive painting style and designs are based on her father’s country called Uwalki, an area west of Haasts Bluff near the Kintore Ranges. The Dreaming stories (Tjukurrpa) behind the paintings relate to the making of spears – an important aspect of “men’s business”. The patterns represent the women’s side of this Tjukurrpa, showing the trees (Watiya Tjuta) that provide the wood for spear shafts and other objects.

This country is characterised by red sandhills, bushes and trees including the beautiful desert oaks. Mitjili was taught some of her key imagery by her mother drawing patterns in the sand. She says: “My mother taught me my father’s Tjukurrpa; that’s what I’m painting on the canvas”. Mitjili’s canvases are patterned with strong, vibrant colours, and contain an incredible energy. This style has gained her a strong following within Australia and internationally. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.

Region: Wangkatjungka

Nada Rawlins was born about 1936 near Kirriwirri, in the southern stretches of Wangkatjungka country, in Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. This country incorporates Percival lakes, a chain of salt lakes running for hundreds of kilometers across the desert. The traditional owners, including Nada’s family and relatives, were custodians of this country and knew the sources of fresh water, which were often located within the salt lakes.

Nada says of her early life: “I was born in the desert in the bush. My mother never put me in a blanket. I never saw my father. Another father grow me up. We came from the desert along the Canning Stock Route when I was a young girl. We walked through Billiluna. After I lived with my family at Moola Bulla. Then we walked alongside the river to Christmas Creek. We had no motorcar – carried everything – swag, billycan, sticks, on our heads. Three mothers and an old man. Elsie Thomas and I worked together  get firewood, cook damper. No kids, we look after old people. I been sick one.”

Nada Rawlins lived in Fitzroy Crossing and at Wangkatjungka Community. She is renowned for the atmospheric abstract landscapes of her country that she paints in large areas of saturated colour. Nada Rawlins is represented widely in National and State art gallery collections and private collections. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.

 

Selected Exhibitions:

1991  Karrayili, Tandanya, Adelaide
1992  Group Show, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney
1993  Images of Power: Aboriginal Art from Kimberleys, National Gallery of Victoria
1993  Mangkaja Women, Fremantle Arts Centre
1994  This is my country, Artplace, Perth
1995  Kimberley Art, Melbourne
1996  Heritage Commission Art Award, Old Parliament House, Canberra
1997  Group Show, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney
1998  Group Show, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London
1999  Ngurrara, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2000  Women’s Work, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney
2001  Ngurrara Canvas, National Gallery of Australia
2001  Little Gems, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2001  Mangkaja Arts Ten Years On, Tandanya, Adelaide
2002  Group Show , Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
2003  Mangkaja Women, Raft Artspace, Darwin
2003  Artists of Wangkajungka  Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2004  Waterholes and Sandhills, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra
2004  Striking Colours of the Living Desert, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney,
2004  Tali and Jila – Sandhills and Waterholes, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
2004  Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane
2004  Stories of Country, Raintree Gallery, Darwin
2004  Divas of The Desert, Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs
2005  Artists of Wangkatjungka, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney
2005  Yirmpurr (Living Water), Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra
2005  Wangkatjungka, Ladner and Fell Gallery, Melbourne
2005  Wangkatjunka Artists, Tandanya, Adelaide

2006  Wangkatjungka Artists, Hogarth Galleries Sydney NSW

2007  Wangkatjungka Mapping Country, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2007  Desert Mosaic, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2008  Wangkatjungka Artists: Canning Stock Route, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2009  Desert Rains – Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2009  Kids and Mentors, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2010  Wangkatjungka Artists: Biddee Baadjo and Nada Rawlins, Kate Owen Gallery, Sydney NSW

2010  Wangkatjungka Artists, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne VIC

2010  Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

Region: Kiwirrkura

Ningura Napurrula was born around 1938 at Watulka, south of the modern Kiwirrkura community in Western Australia, and is one of Australia’s leading indigenous artists. Her work is represented in all Australian national galleries and in one of Europe’s most important public museums, Musee du quai Branly, Paris.

Ningura is the widow of the late Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi, a highly respected Pintupi elder. Ningura’s first contact with Western society was in 1962 when she and Yala Yala brought their family to Papunya. By 1963, they had moved permanently to the settlement. In the 1980s Ningura moved with Yala Yala and their family to Kintore where she started helping with the background dotting on Yala Yala’s artwork, collaboration being a common practice with aboriginal artists. In 1995, as part of the Kintore/Haasts Bluff women’s painting project, she started doing her own artwork.

Characteristic of Ningura’s work is a strong dynamism created by rich linear designs made with heavy layers of acrylic paint. Her depictions include the stories associated with the rockhole sites of Wirrulnga and Palturunya, east of Kiwirrkurra. Aboriginal art status – Collectable artist.

Region: Wangkatjungka

Nyuju Stumpy Brown (1924- 2011) was a senior Wangkatjungka woman born at Ngapawarlu in Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. Stumpy is a full sister to the famous Aboriginal artist Rover Thomas. She lost her mother and father at an early age and was raised by her uncle, Jamali who was droving bullocks on the Canning Stock Route. He took Nyuju to Balgo Hills when she was a little girl, and then later returned to Fitzroy Crossing where Nyuju grew up and lived most of her life.

Stumpy Brown says of her early life: “My country is desert county. There are no rivers, we never see running water like rivers, only creeks after the rain, only jilji (sandhills). When I was a young girl I came to Balgo on a camel. This was the first time I came from the bush. Later I worked in the kitchen at Bohemia Downs Station. We got no money for the work. We got tea, meat and tobacco.”

Stumpy Brown began painting in the late 1980s in Fitzroy Crossing. As a senior law woman and custodian of Ngupawarlu, she recreates the story of her country in bold strong colours, and has been exhibiting her work since 1991. Stumpy lived at Wangkatjungka Community and at Fitzroy Crossing. Stumpy Brown’s work is represented in National and State Galleries and numerous private collections. Aboriginal art status – Collectable artist.

Selected Exhibitions

1991       Karrayili – Tandanya, Adelaide

1992       Group Show, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney

1993       Mangkaja Women , Fremantle Art Centre

1993       Images of Power: Aboriginal Art from the Kimberley, National Gallery Victoria

1994       Ngajakurra Ngurrara Minyarti, this is my country, Festival of  Perth Exhibition/ Artplace Gallery, Perth

1995       Kimberley Art, Melbourne

1995       Group Show, Australian Perspectives Gallery, Brisbane

1996       Heritage Commission Art Award , Old Parliament House, Canberra

1996       Group Show, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney

1997       Group Show, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney

1998       Group Show, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London

1999       Ngurrara  Japingka Gallery, Fremantle

2001       Ngurrara Canvas  National Gallery of Australia

2001       Mangkaja Arts Ten Years On Mangkaja’s 10 year Anniversary Show , Tandanya, Adelaide

2002       Group Show, Art Mob Gallery, Hobart

2003       Ten Mangkaja Women, Raft Artspace, Darwin

2003       Wangkatjungka Women, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2003      Big Country (Group Show), Gondwana Gallery, Alice Springs

2004       Telstra Awards, Museum & Art Gallery of NT, Darwin

2004       Wangkatjungka Country, Raintree Gallery Darwin

2004       Art Trade Auction            Darwin

2004       Jila & Tali – Waterholes and Sandhills, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra

2004       Striking Colours of the Living Desert – Wankatjungka, Country, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney

2004       Big Country (Group Show), Gondwana Gallery, Alice Springs NT

2004     Tali and Jila – Sandhills and Waterholes, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2004       Artists of Wangkatjungka – Stories of Country, Raintree Gallery, Darwin NT

2004       Divas of The Desert, Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs NT

2004       Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane QLD

2005       Wangkatjunka Artists: Stories from The Great Sandy Desert, Tandanya, National Aboriginal Cultural   Institute Adelaide, SA

2005       Wangkatjungka, Ladner and Fell Gallery, Melbourne VIC

2005       Wangkatjungka Artists, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney NSW

2006       Wangkatjunka Artists, Hogarth Galleries, Sydney

2006      Wangkatjungka- Artists of the Great Sandy Desert, ART MOB, Hobart

2006       Wangkatjungka Group Exhibition, Helen Maxwell,  ACT

2006       Luminaries of the Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2007       Wangkatjungka Mapping Country, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2008      Nyuju Stumpy Brown, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2009      Desert Rains – Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

Publications

1991       Karrayili; Ten years on, Exhibition Catalogue

1993       Mangkaja, Women’s Exhibition catalogue

1993       Images of Power Aboriginal Art from the Kimberley – Exhibition Catalogue

1994       Ngajakurra Ngurrara Minyarti, This Is My Country Exhibition catalogue

1996       Yirra: Land Law and Language, Strong and Alive, Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre Publication

1998       Jila Painted Waters of the Great Sandy Desert – Video Documentary / SBS Television

2000       Ngurrara Entry / Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art , Oxford University Press & ANU

2000       Karrayili The history of Karrayili Adult Education Centre, IATSIS Canberra

2001       Painting Up Big, The Ngurrara Canvas, Kaltja (Now National Aboriginal Cultural Institute), Tandanya

Region: Wangkatjungka

Penny K Lyons is a senior Walmajarri woman who was born c1940 at Wanywurtu, under a tutujarti tree (desert walnut tree), in the Great Sandy Desert. She grew up in that place with her family, one father, two mothers, one brother and two sisters. There is a rockhole with spring water at Wanywurtu and Penny remembers hunting for goanna and feral cat at this place.

In the early 1950s Penny’s family joined other Aboriginal groups who had migrated north towards the cattle station country along the edge of the desert in the Fitzroy Valley. When they left the desert Penny was a girl in her early teens. During the difficult journey she lost her mother’s sister, then her father and mother.

Penny says of her journey out of the desert:  “Our group was the last to come out of the bush. Promised husband been bring ‘em out of desert. Camp at bore, Victory Bore. Live at Christmas Creek. Policeman collect ‘em from Juliet River, bring ‘em into Christmas Creek. Station wife, Mrs Laidlaw, give ‘em clothes. Came in from desert, no clothes. Stay here since then. Husband work at station.

Penny K Lyons lives at Wangkatjungka Community, adjacent to Christmas Creek station. She began painting in the mid 1990s, and her paintings depict the traditional waterholes and hunting grounds of her ancestral country in the Great Sandy Desert. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Selected Exhibitions

2004    Wangkatjungka Women, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2004    Jila & Tali – Waterholes and Sandhills, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT

2004    Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane,

Walkabout Gallery, Sydney NSW

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

2006    Wangkatjungka- Artists of the Great Sandy Desert, ART MOB, Hobart

2006    Wangkatjungka Group Exhibition, Helen Maxwell ACT

2007    Wangkatjungka Mapping Country, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2007    Desert Mosaic, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2008    Wangkatjungka Artists: Canning Stock Route, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2009     Desert Rains – Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2010     Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2010     Wangkatjungka Artists, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne VIC

Region: Wangkatjungka

Queenie McKenzie (1915- 1998) was born at Old Texas Downs Station on the Ord River, to the south-east of Turkey Creek. She grew up among Gija people and speaks Gija as her first language. Queenie was the first women painter to gain prominence in the East Kimberley school of painting. A close and long-time friend of reknown Aboriginal artist Rover Thomas, she worked with him on the Texan Downs cattle station.

As a young woman, McKenzie was a camp cook for the stockmen on the cattle station. She fondly remembered an incident that occurred about 1954, when she saved Rover’s life. He had been thrown from a horse and had scalped himself. She sewed his scalp back on so expertly that, even though she had never done such a thing before, doctors were later amazed. In time the incident became the subject of a number of her paintings. Queenie and her husband moved to Warmun in the 1970′s. Although never having children of her own she nevertheless ‘grew up’ lots of other children, whose mothers were unable to look after them.

When Rover Thomas began painting for the public domain, his work inspired Queenie McKenzie to take up painting herself. She preferred using natural pigments and included distinctive powdery pink and pale violet colours made from ochres that she mined herself. As she said, these colours appealed to her sense of beauty. In her compositions, she usually placed images of geographic features in rows against monochrome grounds. Queenie passed away in November 1998, less than a month after she had been awarded the rare honour of being appointed as an official “Living Treasure”. Aboriginal art status – Highly collectable artist.

Region: Kalumburu

Regina Karadada is the second generation of senior Wunumbal artists from Kalumburu community in Western Australia’s most remote north western region. She was born in Wyndham in 1952 at a time when her community was run as a mission settlement. Regina was “taught by the Spanish nuns – good school, taught everything that you learn now, and music, cooking, sewing – everything.” The settlement remained as a mission until 1980 when the community went their own way.

Regina’s family includes most of the best known Aboriginal artists from the Kalumburu area. Her mother Rosie and father Louis Karadada were carvers and painters, as was her auntie and uncle, Lily and Jack Karadada. The senior painter and lawman Alex Mingelmanganu was her maternal uncle. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Region: Wangkatjungka

Rosie says of her early life:

Rosie Goodjie (bush name Kutji) was born about 1935 near Nyirla, at Kulyayi waterhole, near Well 39 on the Canning Stock Route. She moved with other family members north along the Canning Stock Route towards the white settlements of the Kimberley cattle station country. She moved first to Bililuna station where she milked the nanny goats, working for rations. Later she moved to Christmas Creek station.

Rosie Goodjie says of her early life:  “When I left my home lands, came north on the Canning Stock Route to Bililuna, Old Balgo. Catholic Mission there. Most Wangkajunka people travelled that way, when they left the desert to go towards white settlement. No mother, no father when Rosie go that way. No family now. Work at Bililuna. Look after nanny goat, milk ‘em every morning. Work for ration. Take ‘em to river, cook ‘em. Follow river all the way down, to Christmas Creek. Before kids. Working at station with Elsie Thomas and Nada Rawlins. Been learn English right there.”
In the 1980s Wangkatjungka Community was established on land excised from the station. From 1994 to 1998 senior desert Aboriginal artists began recording their stories at Karrayili adult education service. When the Karrayili annex closed in 1998, a number of senior people continued to paint, and Rosie Goodjie was amongst those artists. Rosie paints the country where she grew up with her family before they were separated from their country and moved to Christmas Creek Station. She lives at Wangkatjungka and sometimes camps at the homeland of Ngaranjadu. In 2002 Rosie appeared in the film Rabbit Proof Fence. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

Selected Exhibitions

2003    Artists of Wangkajungka: From the Great Sandy Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2004    Jila & Tali – Waterholes and Sandhills, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT

2004    Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane QLD

2004    Striking Colours of the Living Desert – Wankatjungka Country, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney NSW

2004    Artists of Wangkatjungka – Stories of Country, Raintree Gallery, Darwin, NT

2005    Yirmpurr (Living Water) Recent Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT

2005    Wangkatjunka Artists: Stories from The Great Sandy Desert, Tandanya

2006    Wangkatjungka Group Exhibition, Helen Maxwell, ACT

2007    Wangkatjungka Mapping Country, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2007    Desert Mosaic, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2008    Wangkatjungka Artists: Canning Stock Route, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2009     Desert Rains – Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2009    Kids and Mentors, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2010    Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2010    Wangkatjungka Artists, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne VIC

Region: Unknown

Sarrita King was born in Adelaide in 1988, the younger sister of fellow artist Tarisse King, and daughter of the highly regarded late artist, William King Jungala (1966–2007).  Sarrita inherits her Australian Aboriginality from her father, a Gurindji man from the Northern Territory.

Sarrita grew up in Darwin in the Northern Territory, where her connections to her Aboriginality and her land were nurtured. Experiences of extreme weather and primal landscape have provided the artistic themes for her work from the time she began painting at sixteen. In painting the elements, Sarrita provides her personal visual articulation of the earth’s language.

Stylistically, Sarrita King uses traditional Aboriginal techniques and iconography, but she incorporates along with them unorthodox techniques inherited from her father, as well as techniques she has developed through her own practice. Sarrita King now lives and paints in Canberra.  She has been included in over twenty exhibitions, is represented in galleries in all Australian states, and in many high profile Australian and international art collections. Aboriginal artist status – Rising Star.

Region: Unknown

Thomas Tjapaltjarri was born around 1964 in the Gibson Desert, Western Australia. Thomas and his family, which includes fellow artists Walimpirrnga, Walala, Yukultji, Yalti and Tjakaria, led a completely nomadic life until they emerged from the desert, coming to Kiwirrkurra in 1984. The event of the family coming in from the desert was a momentous one. They had remained isolated from relatives who had left their desert homelands twenty years earlier. The family group had roamed between waterholes around Lake Mackay, along the border country between Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

The family group consisted of four brothers, three sisters and two mothers. The boys and girls were all in their early-to-late teens, although their exact ages were not known; the mothers were in their late 30s. After making contact and establishing their relationships, the Pintupi nine were invited to come and live at Kiwirrkura. The Pintupi-speaking trackers told them there was plenty of food, and water that came out of pipes. Yardi has said that this concept astounded them.

Three of the brothers – Walimpirrnga, Walala, and Tamlik (now known as ‘Thomas’) went on to gain international recognition in the Aboriginal art world. Thomas paints simple, geometric designs and uses a dotting technique shared with other Pintupi artists such as his brothers, Warlimpirrnga and Walala, and with George Ward Tjungurrayi. Thomas’s works generally explore the stories of the Tingari cycle. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.

Region: Kiwirrkura

Walala Tjapaltajarri was born in the Gibson Desert east of Kiwirrkura in the early 1960s. In October, 1984, he was one of a small party of nine people from the Pintupi language group who walked out of the Gibson Desert into the small, remote Kiwirrkura community in northern Western Australia. Their arrival generated enormous interest and international headlines. Until this point Walala had never encountered Europeans or their ways. The group had been following their traditional lifestyle in the desert country west of Lake Mackay.

It was Walala’s brother, Warlimpirrnga, who instructed him in the use of paints and canvas. Walala started painting classic Tingari images. While Walala’s first paintings used a classical Tingari iconography usually reserved for body painting, ground painting and the decoration of traditional artefacts.

By 1996 his painting style had evolved into the works he continues to paint, characterised by rectangular shapes with surrounding dots and a limited palette of up to four colours. Walala Tjapaltajarri paints the Tingari Cycle, a series of sacred and secret mythological song cycles, which is associated with the artist’s many Dreamings. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.

Region: Haasts Bluff

Walangkura Napanangka was born about 1940 in the bush at Tjiturulnga, west of Walungurru (Kintore), in the Gibson Desert, near the Western Australia/ Northern Territory border. Her family was amongst a group of Pintupi people who made their way to the Ikuntji settlement (Haasts Bluff) in 1956. They walked hundreds of kilometres from west of the salt lake of Karrkurutinjinya (Lake Macdonald) to access the supplies of food and water available at the settlement. The family returned to their homelands community of Walungurru in 1981.

Walangkura lived the latter part of her life in Kintore with her husband and fellow artist Johnny Yungut Tjupurrula. Her mother, Inyuwa Nampitjinpa and sister, Pirrmangka Napanangka, both deceased were also painters. Her father was Tutuma Tjapangati.

As an Aboriginal artists, Walangkura began her painting career through participating in the historic Kintore-Haasts Bluff collaborative canvas project ‘Minyma Tjukurrpa’ in 1995. Her paintings exude a powerful energy, recreating the creation stories and ceremonial sites associated with the Tjukurrpa of her Pintupi homelands. Aboriginal art status – Highly collectable artist.

Region: Wangkatjungka

Luurn Willie Kew was born about 1930 at the Kingfisher (Luurn) Dreaming site at Nyirla Rockhole, in the Great Sandy Desert near Well 38 (Wartuparni) on the Canning Stock Route. Willie Kew’s Dreaming and his own bush name identify him with the mythic Kingfisher that brought the people to Nyirla Rockhole in his beak. Willie Kew frequently depicts this site in his paintings. Other sites important to the artist are Warnta and Lipuru on the Canning Stock Route. When he was a small boy Willie walked from Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route all the way to Well 2 with his relatives.

Willie Kew says:  “My country Well 33, Canning Stock Route, my country Wardabunni (Well 38), my country Nyirla, Warnta, Lipuru. My father had two wives his name was Jampitjin. My daddy, my granny she bin pass away at Pomely Rockhole, that’s my country. I bin go to Wardabunni Jila and Nyirla, that’s my country, I bin go there when I was a little boy. My father mother, mother’s uncle took me there, this is my country where I was born at Pomely Rockhole. All people now passed away. When I was a little boy I came all the way to Number 2 Well country, Number 3 Well where we camped.”

Willie Kew travelled with other Aboriginal families in the late 1940s to the cattle station country along the edge of the Fitzrroy valley. He worked as a stockman in the area, and eventually settled at Wangkatjungka Community, with his wife Biddee Baadjo. He has been painting since 1994. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.

 

Group Exhibitions:

1995    Australian Embassy, Paris

1998    Ngurrara Canvas, touring exhibition

1999    Indigenart, Perth WA

2001    NATSIAA Telstra Award, collaborative canvas, Darwin NT

2001    Native Title Business – Noosa Regional Gallery NSW

2002    Michel Sourgnes Fine Arts, Brisbane QLD

2003    Artists of Wangkatjungka – Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2003    Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne VIC

2003    Big Country – Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs NT

2003    Framed Gallery, Darwin NT

2004    Tali and Jila – Waterholes and Sandhills, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2004    Wangkatjungka Country, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney NSW

2004    Artists of Wangkatjungka – Stories of Country, Raintree Gallery, Darwin NT

2005    Artists of Wangkatjungka, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney NSW

2005    Yirmpurr – Recent Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT

2005    Wangkatjungka Artists, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney NSW

2005    Wangkatjungka, Ladner and Fell Gallery, Melbourne VIC

2005    Wangkatjungka Artists: Stories from The Great Sandy Desert, Tandanya National

Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide SA

2006    Wangkatjungka Artists, Hogarth Galleries, Sydney NSW

2006    Wangkatjungka- Artists of the Great Sandy Desert, Art Mob, Hobart TAS

2006    Wangkatjungka Group Exhibition, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT

2007    Wangkatjungka – Mapping Country, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2008    Wangkatjungka Artists: Canning Stock Route, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

2013    Landmarks and Law Grounds: Men’s Paintings, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

Collections

National Gallery of Victoria

Ian and Sue Bernadt Collection

Kerry Stokes Collection

Region: Kiwirrkura

Yinarupa Gibson Nangala is a Pintupi Aboriginal artist, born in the bush at Mukula in the early 1960s, in the region near today’s settlement of Kiwirrkura in Western Australia. Yinarupa is the daughter of Papunya Tula Artist, Anatjari Tjampitjinpa, and co-wife of the late Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi. Thus, she is related by marriage into the families of Aboriginal artists George Ward Tjungurrayi and Willy Tjungurrayi. One of Yala Yala’s other wives was Ningara Napurrula. The mother of five sons, Yinarupa spends her time between her community of Kiwirrkurra and Alice Springs.

Yinarupa started painting in 1996 and in 2009 she won the General Painting Award in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands Art Awards. Her paintings depict topographic renderings of her birthplace, Mukula. Yinarupa and her family lived and travelled throughout this region until 1963, when they met up with a Northern Territory welfare patrol led by Jeremy Long. Yinarupa was taken to the settlement at Papunya, where she attended school and subsequently married the late Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi. Aboriginal art status – Highly regarded artist.