Kunawarritji

Label

When the Western Desert painting movement first emerged at Papunya in the early 1970s, male artists dominated. As the movement spread across the desert, women began to play a commanding role. At Balgo (Wirrimanu), men and women painted side-by-side, creating a series of formidable husband-and-wife painting teams. The foremost of these was Wimmitji Tjapangarti and Eubena Nampitjin. Important elders in their community, Wimmitji and Eubena were renowned for their ceremonial knowledge and healing powers. Together they pioneered a fluid and rhythmic style of painting characterized by sinuous lines and detailed iconographies, as exemplified by Wimmitji’s painting Kurra, North of Jupiter Well. After Wimmitji’s death in 1997, Eubena developed a more energetic and gestural style of painting. The thick dotting of Kunawarritji alludes to the physical act of painting on the body for women’s ceremonies, while the raw immediacy of her brushwork evokes a visceral sensibility of Eubena’s desert homelands.

From the 2019 exhibition A World of Relations, guest curated by Henry Skerritt, Mellon Curator of Indigenous Arts of Australia at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia

Course History

ARTH 89.05, Art History: Theory and Method, Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, Fall 2019

ANTH 15, Political Anthropology, Elena Turevon, Fall 2019

ARTH 89.05, Art History: Theory and Method, Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, Fall 2019

Exhibition History

A World of Relations, Evelyn A. Jaffe Hall Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26-December 8, 2019.

Publication History

Stephen Gilchrist, editor, Crossing Cultures, The Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Art at the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2012, p. 113, Fig 10.9.

Provenance

Warlayirti Artists, Balgo Hills, Western Australia, Australia; Alcaston Gallery, Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia; sold to Will Owen (1952-2015) and Harvey Wagner (1931-2017), Chapel Hill, North Carolina, June 17, 2002; given to present collection, 2009.

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Subjects