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Gallery Gondwana's most experimental artist, Dorothy Napangardi is a
Warlpiri woman from Mina Mina, a significant women's site in a remote
area of the Northern Territory. Her works have featured in exhibitions
throughout Australia, the U.S.A. and Europe where she is regarded as one
of the leading artists of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement.
Dorothy's paintings are highly sought after by both collectors and
curators worldwide. In 1991 she won the Best Painting in European Media,
8th National Aboriginal Art Award; in 1998 the Northern Territory Art
Award; and she was "Highly Commended" for the 16th National Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Award in 1999. In 2001 Dorothy won the 18th
National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award ,presented by
Telstra, with her spectacular black and white painting titled, "Salt on
Mina Mina".
Napangardi's paintings adorn the walls of institutions such as The
Australia Council; the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, Germany and the
Kelton Foundation in Santa Monica, U.S.A.
Dorothy
was first introduced to painting in 1987 by her friend and artist,
Eunice Napangardi.She now paints her country, Mina Mina without any
traditional iconography from her familial lines, creating her own
innovative language to portray her country. Dorothy's paintings are
created by an intricate network of lines that collide and implode on top
of each other creating a play of tension and expansion, transporting the
viewer through a myriad of intersections. Her view is constantly
changing: one painting giving an aerial perspective; the next as if she
has placed a microscope to the ground. Dorothy now resides in Alice
Springs where she paints full time in her own studio at Gallery Gondwana
Dorothy Napangardi -
Karntakurlangu (Belonging to Women)
Karntakurlangu is one of the most extensive
and significant women's Jukurrpa (dreaming) belonging to the
Warlpiri. The works by Dorothy Napangardi depict the ceremonial site of
origin for the Jukurrpa, known as Mina Mina, the artist’s custodial
country, located near Lake Mackay in the Tanami Desert, north of
Yuendumu in the Northern Territory.
During the creation era ancestral women of the
Napangardi and Napanangka sub-section groups (aunt / niece relationship,
in which knowledge is passed from one generation to another) gathered to
perform the ceremonies and take-up ceremonial digging sticks (kuturu)
that had emerged from the ground. A large belt of Eucalyptus trees (Casuarina
Decaisneana) now stand where these digging sticks emerged from the
ground. The Jukurrpa women then proceeded east transiting the
vast expanse of Walpiri tribal land, performing rituals of song and
dance, creating the environment as it is today.
The women travel across the landscape,
stopping to hunt, dance and sing. As each reconnects both individually
and together with their place the travelling tracks converge and
coalesce. It is here that we find the key to Warlpiri art - it is the
journey, that encompasses the creation and thereafter the renewal of the
country and ones connection to the land. |
