Marrapinti, 2004, Naata Nungurrayi
Synthetic polymer paint on linen, 152cm x 122cm
Provenance: Yanda Aboriginal Art, Alice Springs. Private Collection, Victoria. Mossgreen, Melbourne.
A significant figure in the Indigenous art movement, Naata Nungurrayi, started painting along with a wave of Papaya Tula female artists in the mid-90s. Her works capture the memory of the desert homelands of her youth in Western Australia, the land that she and her family were forced to leave. Nungurrayi’s painting style draws upon the geometric patterns of male artists of the community, with the organic and looser female approach. Now in her seventies, Naata is one of the leading Kintore women artists and a respected elder within the Pintupi tribal group (1).
From the authenticity certificate: Her paintings generally reflect traditional women’s law, ceremony (the Tingari cycle in particular), ancestral stories and her country. She has developed a distinctive painting style and colour palette (comprising white, reds, pinks, blacks, yellows and oranges). Her paintings comprise dots which interconnect to form bold lines setting out a topographical view of her country. This painting depicts the creation events at the rock hole site of Marrapinti, west of Kiwirrkura. A group of senior women camped at this site, they gathered kampurarrpa - bush raisin, which are ground to make a type of damper.