Yinarupa Nangala / Women’s Dreaming (2B)

Yinarupa Nangala was born c. 1961 in Mukula, which lies in open country south-west of Jupiter Well in Western Australia. She is the daughter of the late Anatjari Tjampitjinpa, a founding member of the Papunya Tula art movement. She lives at the Kiwirrkura Community in Western Australia along with her brother Ray James Tjangala, another well respected Papunya Tula Artist.

Yinarupa is the widow of another one of the founding desert artists, Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi, and her own art bears a faint, affecting resemblance to his work.  Together they had 5 children.

Yinarupa has both witnessed and been influenced by the extraordinary Papunya Tula art movement, but her first foray into painting in her own right only began in 1996.  As with many of the wives of early Papunya artists, they played an integral part in the finished artworks of their husbands’ early works, often executing the ‘infill’ of many of these artworks.

Although recognised as a serious talent by astute collectors for several years now which included a sell out solo exhibition in 2007 and a place in the Hank Ebes Collection, it wasn’t until Yinarupa won the prestigious General Painting Award at the 26th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2009 that the art world really sat up and took notice of this incredible talent.

Selected Solo & Group Exhibitions

2009
•    “Senior Pintupi Artists”, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne
•    “We are Making Strong Stories”, Redot Gallery, Singapore

2008
•    25th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Darwin

2007
•    “Yinarupa Nungala”, John Gordon Gallery, Coffs Harbour, NSW
•    ‘In association with Papunya Tula Artists’, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne

Selected Awards

2009
•    Winner – General Painting Award, 26th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Darwin.
•    Finalist – Western Australian Art Prize, Perth

This painting depicts designs associated with the rockhole site of Mukula, east of Jupiter Well in Western Australia. During ancestral times a large group of women came from the west and stopped at this site to perform the ceremonies associated with the area. The women later continued their travels towards the east, passing through Ngaminya, Kiwirrkurra and Wirrulnga on their way to Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay). As the women travelled they gathered a variety of bush foods including kampurarrpa berries (desert raisin) and pura (bush tomato). Kampurarrpa berries can be eaten directly from the plant but are sometimes ground into a paste and cooked on the coals as a type of damper, while pura is roughly the size of an apricot and, after the seeds have been removed, can be stored for long periods by halving the fruit and skewering them onto a stick. The shapes in the painting represent the features of the country through which they travelled as well as the bush foods they gathered.