Yinarupa Nangala Archives | Gannon House Gallery

Yinarupa Nangala

Artist’s Statement

This painting depicts designs associated with the rock hole site of Mukula, east of Jupiter Well in Western Australia. During ancestral times, a large group of women from the west stopped at this site to perform ceremonies associated with the area. The women, represented in the painting by the ‘U’ shapes then continued east. As they travelled they gathered a variety of bush foods including kampurarrpa berries (desert raisin) from the small shrub Solanu centrale and pura (bush tomato) from the Solanum chipppendalci plant.

The shapes in the painting represent the features of the country through which they travelled as well as the bush foods they gathered.

- Yinarupa Nangala, 2014, www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/2014/
Biography
Yinarupa Nangala paints abstract aerial views of ‘Mukula’ near Kiwirrkurra, Western Australia. Predominantly painted in black, white, cream and grey on a background of ochre red, her works are composed of dots, lines, and circles with the elements of the story detailed in a solid darker colour, later obscured by the white or cream dots. These forms serve as symbols representing rock holes (water sources in the desert), seeds, ceremonial objects, and geographic locations; her paintings are at once topographic depictions of the landscape and recordings of the very rituals that are enacted there. Nangala is the daughter of the well known painter Anatjari Tjampitjinpa, a founding member of the Papunya Tula artists.

She described her painting, selected as a finalist for the Wynne Prize in 2014, at the Art GAllery of NSW in the following statement;

This painting depicts designs associated with the rock hole site of Mukula, east of Jupiter Well in Western Australia. During ancestral times, a large group of women from the west stopped at this site to perform ceremonies associated with the area. The women, represented in the painting by the ‘U’ shapes then continued east. As they travelled they gathered a variety of bush foods including kampurarrpa berries (desert raisin) from the small shrub Solanu centrale and pura (bush tomato) from the Solanum chipppendalci plant.

The shapes in the painting represent the features of the country through which they travelled as well as the bush foods they gathered.

- Yinarupa Nangala, 2014
Exhibitions
2016 33rd NATSIAA, Darwin - Finalist
2015 32nd NATSIAA, Darwin - Finalist
2014 Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney - Finalist
2014 31st NATSIAA, Darwin - Finalist
2010 Alice Art Prize, Alice Springs - Finalist and Honourable Mention
2010 Western Australian Art Prize, Perth - Finalist
2009 26th NATSIAA, Darwin - Winner General Painting Award
2009 Western Australian Art Prize, Perth - Finalist
2008 25th NATSIAA, Darwin - Finalist
2008 TogArt Contemporary Art Award, Darwin Convention Centre, Darwin - Finalist

Collections

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Hank Ebes Collection, Melbourne
Luciano Benetton Collection, Venice
Museums and Art Galleries of the NT, Darwin
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra