Ningura Napurrula - Wirrulunga Waterhole
ADG: 6192
DescriptionStory of Painting
Wirrulunga Waterhole
Ningura’s painting of Wirrulunga Waterhole, near Kiwirrkura and Lake Mackay in Western Australia, represents the travels of the Ancestor Pintupi women as they travelled through the desert, performing dances and songs. The concentric circles indicate water rockholes, while the wavy lines and semi-circles are water soakages and the arcs depict rocky outcrops.
Ningura Napurrula -biography
Born c. 1938, Watulka south of Kiwirrkura, Western Australia
Language Pintupi
Country Lake Mackay, Western Australia
Community Kintore, Northern Territory
Dreamings Wirrulunga Waterhole, east of Kiwirrkura, Western Australia, Pintupi Women’s Ancestral Stories.
Ningura Napurrula was born at Watulka, south of Kiwirrkura, Western Australia c.1938. She is the widow of Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi, a highly respected Pintupi elder who held significant knowledge of his country’s dreaming stories. They had lived in the desert until meeting up with a welfare patrol led by Jeremy Long, re-settling Indigenous people from the area where the British atomic bomb tests were to be carried out. Together with their young son Maurice, they went in to the newly built Papunya Community. Ningura now lives in Kintore with her family. Ningura’s husband Yala Yala was a founding member of the Papunya Tula Artists’ Group. Ningura also paints for Papunya Tula Pty Ltd. Ningura participated in a collaborative painting with senior Pintupi women which was included in the Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, 2000.
Ningura depicts the mythological events of her ancestors. Her artworks focus on the travels of her female ancestors, the sacred sites that they passed, and the mythological significance of the bush food that they collected. In mythological times, one old woman, Kutunga Napanangka, passed through this site during her travels towards the east. She passed through numerous sites along the way before arriving at the permanent water site of Muruntji, south west of Mt. Leibig. These travels and rituals help to explain the current customs and the ceremonial lives of these Pintupi women.
Selected Collections
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
Museum de Lyon, France
Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France
Laverty Collection, Sydney
Many other public and private collections in Australia and overseas
Awards
2001 Finalist, 18th Telstra NATSIAA, 2001
2002 Highly Commended, 32nd Alice Prize, Alice Springs
2002 ARCO, Spain
Achievements
2002 Australia Post International Stamp Series
2006 Ningura Napurrula is one of eight Indigenous artists selected for the artwork in the Musée du Quai Branly building, Paris, France, opened in 2007.
Commissions
2002 Australia Post Stamp Issue Art of Papunya Tula
Ranking - Most Important Australian Indigenous Artists (both living and deceased)
2011 Ranked 46/100