Joylene Reid Napangardi / Women’s Ceremony (4B)

Joylene Reid Napangardi is a Pintupi woman from Tjiturulnga Walungurru (Kintore), and area to the west of Alice Springs.  The Pintupi people were the last of the Aboriginal tribes to be located by the European settlers. It is for this reason that many of the designs relate to strong tribal issues that remain important to the Pintupi artists.Coming from an artistic lineage, Joylene’s parents are senior artists Walangkura Napurrula and Kalara Tjapangarti.

After growing up at the Ikuntji settlement of Haasts Bluff, in 1981 she returned from the community to Tjukurla and eventually settled in Kintore with her husband and children. 

Joylene paints her country where you find the sacred women’s sites between the communities of Kintore and Kiwirkurra in the Western Desert of Central Australia. Her people would conduct important ceremonies at these sites and tell stories of travelling ancestors who would gather at these sites to rest, sing and dance. Joylene’s choice of colours represent the more traditional pigments used for ground designs and body decoration. Her sense of design and movement shows the close association between painted images and the physical landscape.