Women's Dreaming, c. 2000

synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen

90 x 122 cm

Est. $3,000 – $5,000

Provenance: Aboriginal Dreamtime Gallery, Melbourne, Vic Private Collection, NSW
Artwork story: Karrku is red ochre, the pigment carried across Pintupi country from the ceremonial sites around Mantjintjalkara and ground by women for use in ceremony. It is also the name of the Dreaming that Nungurrayi painted across her career, a body of knowledge that encompasses the grinding of wangunu grass seed for damper, the tali (sandhills) and puli (rocky hills) of the surrounding landscape, and the women's ceremony at Marrapinti to the west of Kiwirrkura. The warm red ground of this linen, dense with overlapping curvilinear forms, announces that country at once. The composition moves freely across the surface: concentric circles mark the ceremonial sites, connected by flowing lines that trace the songlines between them. Large U-shapes, which in Nungurrayi's practice specifically represent the body paint designs applied to women's breasts during ceremony, are distributed throughout, their scale giving the work an open, unhurried quality despite the density of the surface. The paint is worked with the layering and piling-on that characterises her mature style, the whole surface holding warmth and movement in equal measure. The sister of Naata Nungurrayi — whose work also appears in this sale — and George Tjungurrayi, both significant painters, Nungurrayi joined her sister and eight other senior Pintupi women in the collaborative painting Marrapinti, Umari, Tjintjintjin, exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1999 to raise funds for the Kintore renal unit. Her work is held in the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.

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Sale 3 · Lot 72

Nancy Ross Nungurrayi

c.1935 – 2010

Region: Western Desert
Community: Pollock Hills
Language group: Pintupi

Women's Dreaming, c. 2000

synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen

90 x 122 cm

Est. $3,000 – $5,000

Provenance: Aboriginal Dreamtime Gallery, Melbourne, Vic Private Collection, NSW
Artwork story: Karrku is red ochre, the pigment carried across Pintupi country from the ceremonial sites around Mantjintjalkara and ground by women for use in ceremony. It is also the name of the Dreaming that Nungurrayi painted across her career, a body of knowledge that encompasses the grinding of wangunu grass seed for damper, the tali (sandhills) and puli (rocky hills) of the surrounding landscape, and the women's ceremony at Marrapinti to the west of Kiwirrkura. The warm red ground of this linen, dense with overlapping curvilinear forms, announces that country at once. The composition moves freely across the surface: concentric circles mark the ceremonial sites, connected by flowing lines that trace the songlines between them. Large U-shapes, which in Nungurrayi's practice specifically represent the body paint designs applied to women's breasts during ceremony, are distributed throughout, their scale giving the work an open, unhurried quality despite the density of the surface. The paint is worked with the layering and piling-on that characterises her mature style, the whole surface holding warmth and movement in equal measure. The sister of Naata Nungurrayi — whose work also appears in this sale — and George Tjungurrayi, both significant painters, Nungurrayi joined her sister and eight other senior Pintupi women in the collaborative painting Marrapinti, Umari, Tjintjintjin, exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1999 to raise funds for the Kintore renal unit. Her work is held in the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.