Stockroom58 of 549
Click to enlargec.1950 / 1956 – 2013
- Region
- Central Desert & Tanami
- Community
- Yuendumu
- Language group
- Warlpiri
Salt on Mina Mina, 2002
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
180 x 348 cm
Price on application — enquire
- Provenance
- Authenticated and curated for the MCA by Roslyn Premont, Gallery Gondwana Chris Deutscher and Karen Woodbury Collection, Vic Private Collection NSW
- Artwork story
- Dorothy began painting organic forms depicting bush foods in vibrant colours., alongside other Warlpiri women in Alice Springs in 1987. A decade later she reached a significant turning point in her practice when she began producing distinctive paintings that abstractly mapped the sacred landscapes of Warlpiri country. These works, which traced the grid-like patterns of the salt encrustations on the Mina Mina clay pans, were less contrived and increasingly spare, all detail pared back to the barest essentials. They explore the Women’s Digging Sticks Dreaming and other stories related to the travels of the Karntakurlangu, and compel the spectator’s eye to dance across the painted surface, just as these ancestral women danced in the hundreds across the country during the region’s creation. As Dorothy’s career developed, her extraordinary spatial sense enabled her to create mimetic grids of the salt encrustations across the claypans of Mina Mina. The lines of white dots trace the travels of her female ancestors as they danced their way, in joyous exultation, through the saltpans, spinifex and sandhills, clutching their digging sticks in their outstretched hands. This painting, Salt on the Mina Mina, can be seen in the photograph of the exhibition installation which accompanies the work. Its’ strong provenance significantly enhances the long-term value of the work, which is arguably one of Napangardi’s finest. At the time of her untimely death in June 2013, Dorothy was firmly established as the leading female Warlpiri artist of the entire Aboriginal art movement.