Untitled, 1999, Naata Nungurrayi & Martin Tjampitjina
Synthetic polymer paint on linen, 61cm x 55cm
Provenance: Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs. Private Collection, Queensland. 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: This painting depicts designs associated with the soakage water site of Takarinya, south-west of the Kiwirrkura Community. A large group of senior women camped at this site. While in the area they gathered the edible berries known as kampurarrpa or bush raisin from the small shrub Solanum centrale. These berries were ground and used to make a type of damper.