Katherine Marshall Nakamarra / Women’s Ceremony (5A)

Katherine began painting in the mid 1980s, along with her sisters Debra Young Nakamarra and Lorraine Yungut Nakamarra. Painting with their mother, the highly-acclaimed Pintupi artist Walangkura Napanangka, the three sisters have inherited her stories and iconography for representing them.

Katherine’s father, Johnny Yungut Tjupurrula, was also a successful Papunya Tula artist, as were her mother’s sister, Pirrmangka Napanangka, and her grandmother, Inyuwa Nampitjinpa.

Similarities can be seen between Katherine’s work and the bold style of the Papunya Tula movement. This is especially evident in the way the paint is applied in thick, joined dots. Katherine has developed her own palette of colours and her personal way of representing the iconography to depict the traditional sacred women’s sites in the Kintore area, located 250km west of her birthplace.

Katherine is most certainly a talented artist; her works are bold, culturally significant and create a sense of powerful energy.

Selected Exhibitions

2011
• Black and White and Red All Over, Gallery 1, Noosa, QLD
• Passing Down Stories, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, QLD
• Desert Dreamings, Leslie Smith Gallery, Netherlands

2010
• Red Sands Gallery, Eumundi, QLD
• Papunya Tula Art Gallery, Alice Springs, NT
• Harrison Galleries, Paddington, NSW

2009
• Papunya Tula Art Gallery, Alice Springs, NT

Striking colours and heavy dot work are used to depict traditional sacred women’s sites in the Kintore area, which is located 250km west of Katherine’s birthplace. The concentric circles commonly seen in her paintings represent the important ceremonial sites for Katherine and her ancestors and the connecting lines between the circles are the ancient travelling paths that lead to these sites. These were established as an indicator for the passage from one site to the next during ceremony.