Maparr Rockhole, 1999

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

120 x 80 cm

Est. $3,500 – $4,500

Hammer $3,000

Provenance: Warlayirti Artists Aboriginal Corporation, Balgo Hills, WA, Cat No. 56A/99 Private Collection, NSW Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Warlayirti Artists
Artwork story: Maparr Rockhole is a large permanent source of water deep in the Great Sandy Desert, surrounded by trees and bushtucker growing in sandhill country. Lucy Yukenbarri knew it intimately. She was born at Winpurpurla in that same desert and made the long walk in to the Balgo mission as a young woman, stopping at wells along the track to pump for water. The waterholes and soakwaters of her country never left her as a subject, and in this 1999 canvas she maps Maparr with the authority of someone who had drunk from it. Sanddunes fill the upper register. To the lower left, kanytjillyi (bush raisin) grows in abundance. Pura (bush tomatoes) fills the right. At the centre a single dark oval waterhole holds its ground within concentric rings of orange, white, red, green and blue that expand outward and upward in broad, unhesitating arcs. Warlayirti Artists describe Yukenbarri as having moved steadily from the standard Balgo dotting methods toward a technique entirely her own, pressing dots so closely together that they converged into dense masses of pigment. In Maparr Rockhole that process has resolved into something still more direct: single colour fields laid down in thick confident strokes, the paint built up with an immediacy that feels less like description than presence. She described herself as a wild one in her youth, running away from ceremonial business into the bush. The paintings she made in her later years have that same quality of someone who never fully came in from the desert. Her work is held by the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of NSW.

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Sale 3 · Lot 43

Lucy Napanangka Yukenbarri

Region: Western Desert
Community: Wirrimanu (Balgo)
Language group: Kukatja

Maparr Rockhole, 1999

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

120 x 80 cm

Est. $3,500 – $4,500

Hammer $3,000

Provenance: Warlayirti Artists Aboriginal Corporation, Balgo Hills, WA, Cat No. 56A/99 Private Collection, NSW Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Warlayirti Artists
Artwork story: Maparr Rockhole is a large permanent source of water deep in the Great Sandy Desert, surrounded by trees and bushtucker growing in sandhill country. Lucy Yukenbarri knew it intimately. She was born at Winpurpurla in that same desert and made the long walk in to the Balgo mission as a young woman, stopping at wells along the track to pump for water. The waterholes and soakwaters of her country never left her as a subject, and in this 1999 canvas she maps Maparr with the authority of someone who had drunk from it. Sanddunes fill the upper register. To the lower left, kanytjillyi (bush raisin) grows in abundance. Pura (bush tomatoes) fills the right. At the centre a single dark oval waterhole holds its ground within concentric rings of orange, white, red, green and blue that expand outward and upward in broad, unhesitating arcs. Warlayirti Artists describe Yukenbarri as having moved steadily from the standard Balgo dotting methods toward a technique entirely her own, pressing dots so closely together that they converged into dense masses of pigment. In Maparr Rockhole that process has resolved into something still more direct: single colour fields laid down in thick confident strokes, the paint built up with an immediacy that feels less like description than presence. She described herself as a wild one in her youth, running away from ceremonial business into the bush. The paintings she made in her later years have that same quality of someone who never fully came in from the desert. Her work is held by the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of NSW.