Lily Hargraves Nungarrayi was one of the old desert walkers, born in the Tanami Desert in her country near Jilla Well (Chilla Well). When, in 1950, the Warlpiri population at Yuendemu had outgrown the settlement’s housing capabilities, Nungarrayi moved to the settlement of Lajamanu along with 1000 others. A tiny, very isolated point in the north of the Warlpiri estate, ten hour’s drive south of Darwin and eight hours north-west of Alice Springs. Here, Nungarrayi resided until her death in 2019.

1986 saw the first painting workshop for female artists in the Lajamanu community. Quickly, she established herself as a central figure of the newly established painting movement. Deeply involved in women’s ceremonial practice and traditional law, Nungarrayi divided her time between hunting bush food and her daily work at the Warnayaka Art Centre, where the senior women chanted sat cross-legged on the canvas chanting their songlines as they painted their Dreaming stories.

She painted with a restricted palette during the 1980s, depicting detailed ceremonial activities. As time progressed however, her work evolved into the highly colour charged and gestural style she is known and recognised for today. Nungarrayi became an esteemed senior Law woman, responsible for supervising women’s song and dance ceremonies. She was driven in her fervour to record and preserve her culture. Her love of colour and freedom of expression resulted in a distinctive style, executed with bold, confident brush work and a broad range of colour on minimal ground layers.

Her remarkable works, predominantly depicting aspects of Ngalyipi (Medicine/snake Vine) Mala (Wallaby) and Karnta (Women’s dreaming), are included in the collections of important private and museum collections throughout Australia, USA and Europe.

Judith Ryan, who was at the time the curator of Aboriginal Art for the National Gallery of Victoria, visited

Lajamanu ahead of the exhibition ‘Paint Up Big’ in 1990. For the NGV, Ryan procured a set of pastels by the

older women from the walls of the school library. When the paintings were taken down to be packed, Nungarrayi started tearing hers apart – “That one’s rubbish, I’m going to do you another one now.” The other ladies attempted to wrestle it from her. But Lily did not want what she regarded as her weak early work appearing in the National Gallery.

‘She’s a little person with a fiery temperament. She’s called Glurpunta, which means “fighting spirit”’. (personal communication by Christine Nicholls, headmistress at Lajamanu School in the 1980s, see Paint Up Big (Judith Ryan, NGV, 1990).