Karrilwarra

Label

In many desert communities, men and women work separately, developing their own unique styles. This artistic division reflects desert society more broadly, in which women have their own ceremonies, ancestral narratives, and sacred sites. At Papunya Tula, women did not start painting their own works until around 1992. The works of Naata Nungurrayi and George Tjungurrayi epitomize the different styles of men and women’s painting that emerged at Papunya Tula during the 1990s. Naata—along with artists such as Tjunkiya and Wintjiya Napaltjarri—was one of the first women to begin painting at Papunya Tula. Marrapinti  is a women’s site, associated with the travel of a group of ancestral women. Bold, gestural, and organic, Naata’s depiction of Marrapinti contains many of the key characteristics associated with ceremonial body painting used in women’s ceremonies. In contrast, during the 1990s, her brother George pioneered a distinctive style of linear painting derived from sacred designs incised into sacred pearl shells and kurtitji (shields). George uses these inspirations as the basis for free-flowing abstractions that capture the visual dynamism of these ceremonial designs while alluding to the watermarks of the receding desert swamp of Karrilwarra.

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

WRIT 5, Indigenous Knowledge and Development, Kenneth Bauer, Winter 2013

ARTH 16, ANTH 50, Australian Aborigional Art, Howard Morphy, Fall 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50, Australian Aborigional Art, Howard Morphy, Fall 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50, Australian Aborigional Art, Howard Morphy, Fall 2012

ARTH 16, ANTH 50, Australian Aborigional Art, Howard Morphy, Fall 2012

WRIT 5, Nature and Imagination: The Meanings of Place, William Nichols, Fall 2012

SART 29, Photography I, Brian Miller, Fall 2012

SART 30, Photography II, Brian Miller, Fall 2012

SART 25, Painting I, Esme Thompson, Fall 2012

SART 25, Painting I, Enrico Riley, Fall 2012

ANTH 30, Hunters and Gatherers, Nathaniel Dominy, Fall 2012

THEA 28, Dance Composition, Ford Evans, Fall 2012

SART 15, Drawing I, Gerald Auten, Fall 2012

SART 20, SART 71, Drawing II, Drawing III, Colleen Randall, Fall 2012

NAS 42, Gender Issues in Native American Life, Vera Palmer, Fall 2012

ANTH 15, Political Anthropology, Elena Turevon, 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.

Crossing Cultures: The Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Art at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 15, 2012-March 10, 2013; Toledo Museum of Art, April 11-July 14, 2013.

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. 140, no. 58.

Provenance

Papunya Tula Artists Pty. Ltd., Alice Springs, Northern Territory; sold to Will Owen (1952-2015) and Harvey Wagner (1931-2017), Chapel Hill, North Carolina, January 30, 2010; lent to present collection, 2011; given to present collection, 2013.

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Subjects