My Country, 2010

synthetic polymer paint on bean wood

89 x 24 cm

Est. $2,500 – $5,000

Hammer $3,000

Provenance: The Blythman Collection
Artwork story: In 1963 Yinarupa Gibson Nangala and her family were encountered by a Northern Territory welfare patrol led by Jeremy Long in the open country around Mukula, south-west of Jupiter Well in Western Australia. They were taken to Papunya. There, as a child, she witnessed the genesis of the Papunya Tula movement. Her father was Anatjari Tjampitjinpa, one of its founding painters. Her husband was the late Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi, another of its great figures. She began painting in 1996, and for some years gained only moderate recognition. In 2009 her austere style was finally recognised for what it is: Luke Scholes, then Assistant Manager of Papunya Tula Artists, described it as classic Pintupi art at its best, and that year she won the General Painting Award at the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. Scholes wrote of her work: "She has an instinctive sense of space and rhythm, with odd clusters of shape and line conspiring in her paintings to depict topographic renderings of her birthplace, Mukula." My Country 2010 carries that tradition onto a carved bean wood shield. The deep burgundy-red ground is covered in dense cream dot-work organised around two large concentric oval forms, one in the upper register and one in the lower, each a waterhole or significant site in Pintupi Country. Between them, a horizontal band carries a row of short vertical marks, a disruption of the surrounding dot language that signals a different order of information. Smaller concentric circles and paired oval forms populate the field between the major elements. The earthly vibrations of Mukula, as Scholes described them, hum across the surface.

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Sale 3 · Lot 103

Yinarupa Gibson Nangala

b. c.1958 / c.1961

Region: Western Desert
Community: Kiwirrkurra
Language group: Pintupi

My Country, 2010

synthetic polymer paint on bean wood

89 x 24 cm

Est. $2,500 – $5,000

Hammer $3,000

Provenance: The Blythman Collection
Artwork story: In 1963 Yinarupa Gibson Nangala and her family were encountered by a Northern Territory welfare patrol led by Jeremy Long in the open country around Mukula, south-west of Jupiter Well in Western Australia. They were taken to Papunya. There, as a child, she witnessed the genesis of the Papunya Tula movement. Her father was Anatjari Tjampitjinpa, one of its founding painters. Her husband was the late Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi, another of its great figures. She began painting in 1996, and for some years gained only moderate recognition. In 2009 her austere style was finally recognised for what it is: Luke Scholes, then Assistant Manager of Papunya Tula Artists, described it as classic Pintupi art at its best, and that year she won the General Painting Award at the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. Scholes wrote of her work: "She has an instinctive sense of space and rhythm, with odd clusters of shape and line conspiring in her paintings to depict topographic renderings of her birthplace, Mukula." My Country 2010 carries that tradition onto a carved bean wood shield. The deep burgundy-red ground is covered in dense cream dot-work organised around two large concentric oval forms, one in the upper register and one in the lower, each a waterhole or significant site in Pintupi Country. Between them, a horizontal band carries a row of short vertical marks, a disruption of the surrounding dot language that signals a different order of information. Smaller concentric circles and paired oval forms populate the field between the major elements. The earthly vibrations of Mukula, as Scholes described them, hum across the surface.