Title
Untitled (Pukunya)
1999
Artist
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Details
- Place where the work was made
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Walungurru (Kintore)
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Northern Territory
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Australia
- Date
- 1999
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- synthetic polymer paint on linen canvas
- Dimensions
- 152.5 x 121.5 x 2.0 cm stretcher
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased with funds provided by the Leo Christie Emerging Artists Fund 1999
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 139.1999
- Copyright
- © Estate of Inyuwa Nampitjinpa. Licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd
- Artist information
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Inyuwa Nampitjinpa
Works in the collection
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About
Inyuwa Nampitjinpa was among a group of Pintupi people who made their weary way into Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff) settlement just before Christmas 1956. They had walked hundreds of kilometres from west of the salt lake of Karrkurutintjinya (Lake Macdonald) to experience first-hand the supplies of food and water on offer at the settlement under the new government administration that had replaced the Lutheran missionaries. Nampitjinpa already had four children – three sons and a daughter – with her elderly husband Rartji Tjapangati. Nine years later, Rartji Tjapangati passed away in Papunya, and Nampitjinpa re-married. Her second husband was Tutuma Tjapangati, one of the most senior men in the founding group of artists painting at Papunya in 1971. Nampitjinpa and her family moved back to the Pintupi homelands community of Walungurru (Kintore) soon after its establishment in 1981.
Tutuma Tjapangati was such a prolific and ebullient painter that it is doubtful Nampitjinpa would have been called upon to assist him, but when she took up painting her style owed much to his freewheeling, energetic approach. Nampitjinpa became involved with the Haasts Bluff/Kintore women's painting project in 1994. As an elder of the community, she assumed a supervisory role regarding the portrayal of women's ceremonial subject matter, reminiscent of that taken by the senior men early on in the history of the Papunya movement.
In 1997 Nampitjinpa had an operation to remove cataracts, which dramatically improved her eyesight, and she began painting regularly. Nampitjinpa's paintings helped establish the signature style of senior women's painting at Walungurru. Their dense, tactile surfaces, applied with a roughness and sheer volume of paint, exceeded those of any previous practitioners in the Desert style. As seen in 'Untitled (Pukunya)', 1999, her work retained only the most basic elements of traditional imagery, referencing rockholes, campsites and women's utensils simplified to the point of abstraction. The large permanent water site of Punkilpirri, south west of Tjukula, was a recurrent subject.
Until her death, the artist sustained a creative energy that resulted in her first solo exhibition at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, in June 1999. The paintings were still up on the walls of the gallery when Nampitjinpa passed away. Her legacy remains in the paintings of her daughters, Walangkura Napanangka and the late Pirrmangka Napanangka.
Viven Johnson in 'Tradition today: Indigenous art in Australia', Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2004
© Art Gallery of New South Wales
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Places
Where the work was made
Walungurru (Kintore)
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Exhibition history
Shown in 4 exhibitions
New paintings from Kintore Women, Utopia Art Sydney Pty Ltd, Alexandria, 03 Jul 1999–24 Jul 1999
Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 18 Aug 2000–12 Nov 2000
One sun, one moon, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 03 Jul 2007–02 Dec 2007
Sentient lands, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 04 Jun 2016–08 Oct 2017
Sentient lands, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 21 Jan 2017–08 Oct 2017
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Bibliography
Referenced in 5 publications
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Hetti Perkins, Education Kit - Papunya Tula: genesis and genius, 'Pintupi women', pg. 9, Sydney, 2000, 9 (colour illus.).
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Vivien Johnson, Tradition today: Indigenous art in Australia, 'Inyuwa Nampitjinpa', pg. 102, Sydney, 2004, 102, 103 (colour illus.).
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Hetti Perkins and Hannah Fink, Art and Australia (Vol. 38, No. 1), 'Covering ground: the corporeality of landscape', pg. 74-83, Sydney, Sep 2000-Nov 2000, 81 (colour illus.).
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Hetti Perkins and Hannah Fink (Editors), Papunya Tula: genesis and genius, Sydney, 2000, 136 (colour illus.), 281.
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Hetti Perkins and Hannah Fink, One sun one moon: Aboriginal art in Australia, ‘Genesis and genius: The art of Papunya Tula artists’, pg. 181-188, Sydney, 2007, 188 (colour illus.).
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