Naata Nungurrayi

(born circa 1932)

Untitled (Soakage Water and Rockhole Site of Marrapinti), 2001

Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
Painted at Kintore, Northern Territory
Purchased from Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, Northern Territory in May 2002
The Laverty Collection, Sydney

EXHIBITED:
Paintings from Remote Communities: Indigenous Australian Art from the Laverty Collection, Sydney, Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand, 15 December 2007 - 24 February 2008; Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle, 5 July - 31 August 2008
The Australian Club, Melbourne, 30 June - 16 September 2011
Heart and Soul: the Laverty Collection, Sydney, Museum of contemporary Aboriginal art (AAMU), Utrecht, The Netherlands, 20 January - 10 June 2012

LITERATURE:
Colin Laverty, 'Diversity and Strength: Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art - A Private Collection', Arts of Asia, November - December 2003, cat. no. 8, p.86 (illus.)
Annette Larkin, 'Perspectives - Hunters and Collectors', Arco contemporary art magazine, number 33, spring 2005, p.21 (illus.)
Colin Laverty and Elizabeth Laverty et al., Beyond Sacred: Recent Painting from Australia's Remote Aboriginal Communities - the collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, Melbourne: Hardie Grant Books, 2008, p.61 (illus.)
Colin Laverty and Elizabeth Laverty et al., Beyond Sacred: Australian Aboriginal Art - the collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, Edition II, Melbourne: Kleimeyer Industries, 2011, p.64 (illus.)

This painting is sold with an accompanying Papunya Tula Artists certificate.

Naata Nungurrayi
Naata Nungurrayi is widely acknowledged as a revered
cultural authority for the country surrounding the
Kiwirrkura Community in the Gibson Desert region of
Western Australia. In her paintings, Naata depicts the
landforms and water sources that identify the significant
sites in this area which were visited by a group of
ancestral Kanaputa Women during the Tjukurrpa.

Throughout her relatively brief artistic career, Naata has
developed a unique visual language which acknowledges
and expands upon the ancient iconography of her
Pintupi heritage. The two works in this catalogue (lots 8
and 34), from the early 2000s, were created amid a period
of innovation and experimentation. Her reliance upon
the circle and line constructions that loosely reflected
the classic Tingari paintings of her male counterparts
dissolved. She began to produce open compositions
of massed "U" shapes, roundels and skeletal armlets
suspended in discordant fields of colour, reminiscent of
the surrounding semi-arid terrain. During this time
Naata also began to explore the possibilities of her
painting tools. Both ends of the paint brush and twigs
torn from nearby trees were utilised in different ways to
brush and stipple an increasingly textural surface.

Naata is an instinctive painter whose command of
line, colour and form is immediate and breathtaking.
Artist and art are rarely so inextricably linked; each a
precious balance of cultural authority, artistic spontaneity,
conviction and whim. These paintings capture an
important artistic turning point of an artist who has
brought due attention to the way Aboriginal women of
the Western Desert perceive their country.

Luke Scholes