Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi / Grandmother’s Country (11B)

Gabriella was born in 1967 at Mt Allan, Northern Territory.  She is the eldest daughter of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, one of the most famous of our Australian Artists (deceased 2002).  She began painting at an early age, under the tuition of her famous father and often collaborated with him, producing important works. 

The content of Gabriella’s paintings is the Dreaming stories handed down to her from her paternal grandmother, Long Rose Nungala and the other senior women who taught her in her formative years – these include Grandmother’s Dreaming, Seven Sisters Dreaming (Milky Way), Goanna, Bush Tucker and Serpent Dreamings of her Anmatyerre  heritage.

She was the youngest artist to be awarded the prestigious Alice Springs Art Prize whilst still studying at Yirara College at age 16.  Her natural talent and knowledge of the women’s dreaming stories was enhanced technically by her association with the grass roots painters of Papunya Tula – her father’s brother Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, Long Jack Phillipus, Johnny Warrankgula Tjupurula, and many others.

Gabriella resides in Melbourne with her family and travels extensively in her profession, as did her late father.  Her Prizes, Collections and Exhibitions both within Australia and Internationally reflect the high standing in which the artist is held and the undeniable investment potential of her very beautiful artworks.  

Selected Exhibitions

1987
– Brisbane – in conjunction with her father Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri

1988
– Aboriginal Dot Painting, Melbourne

1992
– Coo-ee Gallery, Sydney
– Washington DC, U.S.A.

1993
– Berne, Switzerland
– London, U.K.

1998
– Art of the Aborigines, Warsaw, Poland

1999
– Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide
– Aboriginal Art Galleries of Australia, Melbourne

2000
– United Nations Building, New York

2001
– Mia Mia Gallery, Melbourne

2002
– Canterbury Art Exhibition, Melbourne

 2006
– Shanghai Art Fair, China
– ‘Dreaming Their Way’, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, USA

2007
– Shanghai Art Fair, China
– London Art Fair, UK

2008
– Art Aborigene Australien, Paris, France

2009
– Generations, Aranda Aboriginal Art, Melbourne
– Starry Starry Nights, Framed Gallery, Darwin
– Best of Gabriella Possum, Kate Owen Gallery, Sydney

2011
– Gabriella and Michelle Possum, Aranda Aboriginal Art, Melbourne

Selected Collections
– National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
– Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
– Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide
– Holmes a Court Collection, Perth
– Richard Kelton Foundation Collection, Santa Monica, USA
– Galeria R. Poznan, Poland
– Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs
– Winterthur Collection, Switzerland

Awards

1991
– Professional Development Grant, from the Aboriginal Arts Unit of the Australia Council for the Arts

1993
– Alice Springs Art Prize, Record Cover for “Coloured Stone”

In this painting the artist depicts motifs that give symbolic form to tribal women engaged in cultural activities in a desert environment known as Yuelamu, which the women inherited from their Ancestral Grandmother, who travelled to this Anmatyerre site in the Tanami Desert during the Dreamtime, at Creation.

Represented as symbolic U-shapes, the women are shown in different areas collecting wild growing bush food, which is given form through star-like shapes that represent berry bushes, while clusters of encased small dots and large dots serve to represent various types of berries and bush plums that the women collect. The red fire-like motif represents the women’s campfire and ceremonial site where the women gather for ceremony and engage in ritual song and dance and create body art and sand paintings, which the concentric circles in this work depict and double to act as specific sites where bush food is in plenty. Rain nourishes the desert and is captured through the white dotted motifs , which also serves to double as pipe-clay used as paint in the ritual life of Yuelamu`s women, who follow their Ancestral Grandmother’s example in her home country, which is the subject of this work.