Walangkura Napanangka

Born: c.1946
Region: Central Desert Community:
Outstation: Tjturrulnga
Language: Pintupi

As one of the last generation to remember a childhood lived in the desert hunting and gathering with her family, Walangkura Napanangka’s paintings recall the stories of country and the location of specific sites in her traditional homeland west of the salt lake of Karrkurutinjinya (Lake Macdonald). Born in 1946, at Tjitururrnga west of Kintore, in the remote and arid country between the Northern Territory and Western Australia, she lived with her father Rantji Tjapangati and mother Inyuwa Nampitjinpa and later, while still a teenager, travelled by foot with her family over the hundreds of kilometres from their remote desert home eventually joining Uta Uta Tjangala’s group as they walked in to the settlements of Haasts Bluff and then Papunya.

The lure of settlement life with its promise of plentiful food and water belied the harsh conversion they would make to an alien lifestyle with its many problems and unfamiliar demands. The upheaval however, was ameliorated to some degree by the proximity of her immediate family including her mother Inyuwa, adoptive father Tutuma Tjapangati, and sister Pirrmangka Napanangka (now deceased) all of whom became artists.

Relocated to the community of Kintore in 1981 when the outstation movement began Walangkura participated in the historic women’s collaborative painting project (1994) that was initiated by the older women as a means of re-affirming their own spiritual and ancestral roots. It was a time of specifically female singing, ceremony and painting, away from the gaze of outsiders and men folk. The huge and colourful canvases that emerged from the women’s camp were ‘alive with the ritual excitement and narrative intensity of the occasion’ (Johnson 2000: 197). Within a year, Papunya Tula Artists, now established at Kintore, had taken on many of these women as full-time artists, revitalising the company after the deaths of many of the original ‘painting men’. While individual women forged their own stylistic trajectory, these paintings were immediately distinguishable from the men’s more cerebral and symmetrical style. They radiated an exuberant and vibrant energy, the felt heart-beat of women’s affinity to country and spirit.

Walangkura’s early works, created from 1996 onward, are characterized by masses of small markings and motifs covering large areas of canvas. Her favorite colour, a deep sandy orange predominates, accentuated against more somber blacks and reds and dusky greens or yellows. More recent works show a gestural quality though still tightly packed with an intensity of geometric line work representing sandhills. In a sense this provides a strong visual and contextual link to the men’s linear style as exemplified by the works of George Tjungurayi, Turkey Tolson and Willy Tjungurayi. They are rich with a sense of rhythm and unimpeded movement: they show sandhills, rockholes, journeys and gatherings of ancestral women, the flow of colours in subtle shifts of light. Many of these are monumental works that transmit the confidence of an assured and dynamic creativity. Walangkura transmits the power of the desert, soaked up during her childhood years, and imbues her works with the mystery of a sacred perception.

Walagkura has become one of Papunya Tula’s most senior women artists. After the death of her mother Inyuwa and the tragic death of her half sister Pirrmangka in 2001, she moved for a time to Kiwirrkura where she lived with her husband and fellow artist Johnny Yungut Tjupurrula and their six children. Her first solo exhibition was held at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in 2003, and this was followed by another at Utopia Art Sydney in 2004. As her fame spread from this time onward she began painting increasingly for a number of private independent dealers outside of the Papunya Tula company. As a result her works can be seen in a great many galleries and retail shops throughout the country.

Walangkura Napanangka is a formidable artist capable of creating masterpieces on canvases up to three metres in size and many of these, despite their provenance, are likely to become emblematic examples of Pintupi women’s art.

Walangkura Napanangka focuses on the Jukurrpa or Dreaming stories belonging to the women of her area in the Gibson Desert to the west of Kintore. Walangkura paints stories of sites mark the epic journey of the ancestor figure Kutungka Napanangka, as she travelled eastwards from the Gibson Desert country beyond Kiwirrkurra in the west, across sandhill country to an area of surrounding rockholes, depicted by concentric circles, that lie south west of Mt Liebig.

Kutungka is a powerful Ancestor figure, capable of devouring humans, and her story intersects with other Dreamings as she traverses the great tracts of Pintupi country.

Awards:
2005 1st prize Redlands Westpac Art Prize

Collections:
Aboriginal Art Museum, The Netherlands.
Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Artbank.
Gabrielle Pizzi Collection.
Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory.
National Gallery of Australia
The Kelton Foundation, USA.

Exhibitions:

Individual Exhibitions:
2004 – Walangkura Napanangka, Utopia Art Sydney.
2003 – Walangkura Napanangka: Recent Paintings, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne.

Group Exhibitions:
2005 – Papunya Tula Artists, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, Victoria; Luminus: selected works from the Helen Read Collection, touring; Papunya Tula Artists – new work for a new space, Utopia Art Sydney.

2004 – Pintupi Art 2004, Tony Bond Aboriginal Art Dealer, Adelaide, South Australia; Papunya Tula Artists – 2004, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, Victoria; All About Papunya, Chapman Gallery Canberra, Australian Capital Territory; The Inner And The Outer, Stadtgalerie Bamberg, Villa Dessauer, Bamberg, Germany; Mythology and Reality – Contemporary Aboriginal Desert Art from the Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; 21st Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Darwin, Northern Territory; EXPLAINED, A closer look at Aboriginal art, Aboriginal Art Museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands; Ma Yungu/Pass It On, Framed Gallery, Darwin, Northern Territory; Melbourne Art Fair 2004, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne; Pintupi Artists, Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, Northern Territory; Mythology & Reality, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, Victoria.

2003 – Pintupi Art 2003, Tony Bond Aboriginal Art Dealer, Adelaide, South Australia; Recent Paintings By The Women Artists Of Kintore And Kiwirrkura, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; Aboriginal Art 2003, Scott Livesey Art Dealer, Melbourne, Victoria; Pintupi Art From The Western Desert, Indigenart, Perth, Western Australia; Masterpieces From The Western Desert, Gavin Graham Gallery, London, United Kingdom; Papunya Tula Artists – A Gift From The Desert, Utopia Art Sydney, New South Wales; Pintupi Artists, Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, Northern Territory.

2002 – Paintings From Our Country, Tony Bond Aboriginal Art Dealer, Adelaide, South Australia; Aboriginal Art 2002, Scott Livesey Art Dealer, Melbourne; William Mora Galleries, Melbourne; Pintupi Mens’ and Womens’ Stories, Indigenart, Perth; Art Born Of The Western Desert, Framed Gallery, Darwin, Northern Territory; Saluting Papunya, Chapman Gallery, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory; Pintupi Artists, Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, Northern Territory; Melbourne Art Fair 2002, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne.

2001 – Size Doesn’t Matter – Papunya Tula Painting 1997-2001, William Mora Galleries, Melbourne; Art of the Pintupi, Tony Bond Aboriginal Art Dealer, Adelaide, South Australia;Six Painters From Papunya Tula Artists, Utopia Art Sydney, Sydney; Dreamscapes-Contemporary Desert Art, Mostings Hus, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Papunya Tula Aboriginal Art, William Mora Galleries, Melbourne; Papunya Tula 30th Anniversary Exhibition, Chapman Gallery, Canberra, ACT; Indigenart, Perth; The Desert Mob Art Show, Araluen Art Centre, Alice Springs, Northern Territory; Pintupi Exhibition, Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, Northern Territory; Kintore and Kiwirrkura, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; Museum, Utopia Art Sydney, Sydney; 31st Alice Prize, Araluen Art Centre, Alice Springs, Northern Territory; Flinders University Art Museum, Flinders University, Bedford Park, South Australia.

2000 – Aboriginal Art, Aboriginal Art Galerie Bahr, Speyer, Germany; Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Framed Gallery, Darwin; Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; Pintupi Women’, Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, Northern Territory.

1999 – Utopia Art Sydney, Sydney; Flinders University Art Museum, Flinders University, Bedford Park, South Australia; 16th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; New Horizons 2000, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne.

1998 – The Desert Mob Art Show, Araluen Art Centre, Alice Springs, Northern Territory; Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; 15th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; Art Of The Aborigines, Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; Melbourne Art Fair, Melbourne.

1997 – Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; 14th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award 1997, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; The Desert Mob Art Show, Araluen Art Centre, Alice Springs, Northern Territory; Chapman Gallery, Manuka, Canberra.

1996 – Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, Alice Springs, Northern Territory; Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; Utopia Art Sydney, Sydney; A/S Art Foundation, Araluen Art Centre, Alice Springs, Northern Territory.

Select Bibliography:
Isaacs, J., Spirit Country: Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Hardie Grant Books, San Francisco, 1999.

Mellor, D. and Megaw V., Twenty Five Years and Beyond, Papunya Tula Paintings, exhibition catalogue, Flinders Art Museum, Flinders Press, Adelaide, 1999.

Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2000.

Bardon, Geoffrey; Ryan, Judith; Pizzi, Gabrielle; Stanhope, Zara., Mythology and Reality –
Contemporary Aboriginal Desert Art from the Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2004.

Walangkura Napanangka: Recent Paintings, exhibition catalogue, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, 2003.

Bahr, Elizabeth. The Unseen in Scene, exhibition catalogue, Aboriginal Art Galerie Bahr, Speyer, Germany, 2000.

Dreamscapes-Contemporary Desert Art, exhibition catalogue, Mostings Hus, Frederiksberg, Denmark, 2001.

Scott Livesey Art Dealer, Aboriginal Art 2002, exhibition catalogue, Melbourne, 2002.

Scott Livesey Art Dealer, Aboriginal Art 2003, exhibition catalogue, Melbourne, 2003.

Scott Livesey Art Dealer, Masterpieces From The Western Desert, exhibition catalogue, London, 2003.

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Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies