Makinti Napanangka (c1930 – 2011) was a senior Pintupi woman, born in Magarri, south-west of Kintore. Napanangka was first introduced to painting in 1995 by a member of the Haasts Bluff-Kintore painting project, going on to paint for the Papunya Tula Artists from 1996.
She quickly developed her own distinctive style, characterised by a more spontaneous approach. Her methods echoed the gestures seen in hand-painting ochre onto the body for women’s ceremonies, compared to the meticulous application of dots that characterised the men style of art making. Napanangka regularly applied thick layers of paint in a fluid manner, using a brush or her fingers to move the paint across the canvas. As such, each work is highly tactile, tracing a sense of touch and rhythm, rather than being purely visual. This repetition of colour has been described having a ‘rhapsodic ‘effect suggesting a sense of dance and spiritual power tied to cultural identity. All Napanangka’s paintings are described as depictions of her Country, including her birthplace, the rockhole sites of Lupulnga; the salt lake of Karrkurritinyja (Lake MacDonald), each work embeded with ancestral women’s stories. The line patterning distinctive to Napanangka’s style also represents the swirling hair-string skirts worn by women during ceremonies, reaffirming their cultural stories through dance and song. These skirts are woven by the women from human hair and are shown as a complex pattern of pale lines, often over an orange or ochre background.
Napanangka’s was selected in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award for five consecutive years, beginning in 1997. She held her first solo exhibition in 2000, included in the major survey exhibition Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius at the Art Gallery of New South Wales the same year. In 2003, Napanangka was among the finalists for the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, going on to be selected for inclusion in the Sydney Biennale 2012. Napanangka’s work is held in every major collection nationally, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.
MAKINTI NAPANANGKA
Lupulnga – Hairstring c2005
acrylic on linen
60 × 123 cm
$9,750
[Private collection Sydney, originally purchased Ngintaka Arts, Alice Springs NT, Certificate of Authenticity]
