Naata Nungurrayi
Naata Nungurrayi
BORN
CIRCA 1955, WARBURTON RANGES, WA
DIED 2021
COUNTRY
PINTUPI
COMMUNITY
KINTORE, NT
LANGUAGE
PINTUPI
About
Naata Nungurrayi was born at the site of Kumil, west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia, circa 1932. Naata was a young, widowed mother when she first encountered the NT Welfare Patrol in 1963, accompanying them to Papunya to live the following year. She later moved from Papunya to Docker River before settling in Kintore following the homelands movement.
Naata began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1996. In 2003, her work was chosen alongside paintings by four other Papunya Tula artists to appear on an Australia Post international postage stamp. In March 2004, Australian Art Collector magazine named Naata among Australia’s top 50 most collectable artists. Naata exhibited extensively, and her works are held in many major collections including the NGA, NGV, AGNSW, QAGoMA, AGSA, and the Harvard Art Museum and Toledo Museum of Art in America. Sadly, Naata recently passed away, but her legacy lives on in her work and her Country.
The site Karrilwarra, two rockholes northwest of Kiwirrkura, features prominently in her work. Naata referred to this site as her ‘home’.
WORK
Naata’s untitled painting depicts designs associated with the soakage water site of Unkunya, west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia. The associated Tjukurrpa (Dreaming Story) tells of two snakes that passed through this site after travelling far from the east. The twin soakages that define this site were formed by the snakes as they disappeared underground. During mythological times, a group of ancestral women travelling from the west passed through Unkunya on their way to Marrapinti. The women stopped at Marrapinti to make ceremonial nose bones, also known as marrapinti, which were traditionally worn through the septum. The women continued their travels to the east, passing through Ngaminya and Wirrulnga, collecting kampurarrpa (desert raisins) from the small shrub Solanum centrale along the way.
Naata’s blazing palette and dynamic line-work breathe life into the journey of the two snakes as they shape the site of Unkunya. The artist’s repetitive use of parallel lines conjures both the travels of the women and the shapes of marrapinti they created along their way.
