WALANGKURA NAPANANGKA - WIRRULNGA (TWO ROCKHOLES)

 WALANGKURA NAPANANGKA
WIRRULNGA (TWO ROCKHOLES),  1999
122 x 92 cm
acrylic on Belgian linen
 
PROVENANCE
Kintore Western Desert, NT
Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat. No. WN9911149Private Collection, VicAboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, Vic Cat No. 8167Ebes Collection, Vicaccompanied by a certificate booklet from Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings and a certificate of authenticity from Papunya Tula Artists 
 
STORY
As one of the last generation to remember a childhood lived in the desert, Walangkura Napanangka travelled by foot over the hundreds of kilometres from her remote desert home before settling at Papunya with her mother Inyuwa, adoptive father Tutuma Tjapangati, and sister Pirrmangka Napanangka all of whom became artists.In 1994 she participated in the historic womenā€™s collaborative painting project that was initiated by the older women, and in time Walangkura became one of Papunya Tulaā€™s most senior women artists. Her first solo exhibition was held at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in 2003, and this was followed by another at Utopia Art Sydney in 2004.This painting depicts the designs associated with Wirrulnga, a site with two rockholes on top of a hill, just east of the Kiwirrkurra Community. The small shapes represent the rocks surrounding the site. A large group of ancestral women vistied the site and gather the berries known as Ngamunypurru or Conkleberry from the shrub Carissa lancoeolata. The women later travelled east passing through Pukanya and Umair and then on to Pinari, north of Kintore.
 
EXHIBITED
We Choose to Challenge, March 2021, Cooee Art Paddington