Ngayuku Ngura (My Country), 2017, Barbara Moore
Acrylic on linen, 200cm x 300cm
Provenance: Salon des Refusés, Darwin.
Exhibited: Salon des Refusés, Darwin 2017.
Barbara Moore is from Ti Tree in the Northern Territory, but now live and works at Amata’s Tjala Arts Centre. Her large scale bold works are depictions of her country, using traditional markings with vibrant modern colours. Moore was the recipient of he prestigious General Painting Award at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (Telstra Prize) in 2012.
In Ngayuku Ngura, Barbara Moore paints her country. The use of design represents variations in the landscape, like a map. The single and concentric circles indicate landmarks that are significant to her people like rock holes, watering holes and mountains. In Pitjantjatjara language, the word Ngura is a definition for the physical geography of land and country. However Ngura has a more richly imbedded meaning as a place to which someone belongs, defining where an individual comes from, family connections, skin groups and language (1).