Meredith Daniels Napaltjarri / Women’s Ceremony (A14320)

Meredith was born in Papunya in 1980. She grew up in Haasts bluff, attending primary school there. Now she lives between Haasts Bluff and Mt Liebig. Meredith paints the Tjukurrpa of Illpili located west of Mt Liebig, towards Kintore. This is the country of her mother, Marilyn Nangala. Her mother had been passed down the knowledge from her grandfather.

Meredith started painting in 1999 in Mt Liebig when there was still an art centre there. Her mother’s auntie (her grandmother) was painting there too. It was her who taught Meredith how to paint. Following the closure of Mt Liebig art centre in 2010, Meredith has been painting at Ikuntji Artists since 2014. Meredith has spent much of her life studying, undertaking studies in women’s studies and development as well as reading and writing at Batchelor Institute in Alice Springs. Later she studied Mental Health, which she now works in at Papunya clinic. She travels around to surrounding communities, Haasts Bluff, Mt Liebig and Kintore for her job.

In her spare time, she paints, travels to land council meetings and visit her mother’s family in Kintore.

Selected Exhibitions
• Chants du Desert – Art aborigene contemporain, Ville d’Eu, France, 2016
• Screen printing workshop at Ikuntji Art, 2016
• Chants du Desert – Art aborigine contemporain, Ville d’Eu, France, 2015
• Beanie Workshop 2015
• Desert Mob Market Place 2015
• 11th Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, Darwin Convention Centre, Darwin NT 2017
• 10th Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, Darwin Convention Centre, Darwin NT 2016

Traditional colours and heavy dot work are used to depict sacred women’s sites in the Kintore area. The concentric circles commonly seen in her paintings represent the important ceremonial sites for Meredith and her ancestors and the connecting lines between the circles are the ancient travelling paths that lead to these sites.