Karntakurlangu Jukurrpa, 2001
inscribed verso: 'Dorothy Napangardi / 6213DN''
synthetic polymer paint on linen
122.0 x 122.0cm (48 1/16 x 48 1/16in).

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs (stamped verso)
Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne

EXHIBITED
Dancing up country: The work of Dorothy Napangardi, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 10 December 2002 - 9 March 2003 (label attached verso)

LITERATURE
Merryn Gates (ed.), Dancing up country: the work of Dorothy Napangardi, exh. cat., Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2002, pl. 30, p. 42 (illus.)

'In the Women's Dreaming, digging sticks called kana or karlangu, magically emerged from the land itself near Mina Mina and on nearby sites. The emergence of the digging sticks equipped the Ancestral Women for their travels along the interlacing Dreaming and dancing tracks that Napangardi references in her work.'1

Napangardi began painting the Karntakurlangu Jukurrpa between 1997 and 1998. Her paintings on this subject can be interpreted as intricately detailed maps of the overlapping, meandering pathways of the travelling Ancestral women with their digging sticks. The subtle colour gradations and undulating laying out of the fine dots imbue the canvas with a sense of vibrating motion, suggesting the rythmic dancing of the women, creating and transforming the landscape as they move across the land.

Francesca Cavazzini

1. Merryn Gates (ed.), Dancing up country: the work of Dorothy Napangardi, exh. cat., Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2002, p. 62

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- Aboriginal Art
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