Ningura Napurrula 

Born:                       1938 

Region:                    Western Desert

Community:             Kintore 

Outstation:               LakeMcKay

Language:                Pintupi 

Local group:             Pintupi 

Subjects and Themes:    

Travels of her female ancestors, the sites they passed and the bush tucker they collected.

 
Awards: 

2001 Finalist 18th Telstra Art Award
2002 Alice Prize, highly recommended

 Collections:

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. 
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra. 
Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, Melbourne. 
Museum and ArtGallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin. 
Museum de Lyon, France. 
Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France. 
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Exhibitions:

2000 - William Mora Galleries, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. 
2005 - Papunya Tula Artists, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne. 
2004 - Mythology and Reality - ContemporaryAboriginalDesert Art from the 
Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; 
Peintres Pintupi, Galerie DAD, Mantes-la-Jolie, France.
2003 - Glen Eira City; Mason Gallery at Japinka WA; Gabriella Pizzi, Melbourne; 
Australian Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Toskansky Place, Prague, Czech Republic; 
Masterpieces from the Western Desert, Gavin Gallery, London, UK.
2002 - Araluen Art Centre. 
2001 - Telstra Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory; 
Pintupi, Alice Springs; Aborigena, Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, Italy.
2000 - Gabrielle Pizzie Melbourne; Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, 
ArtGallery of NSW.
1999 - Utopia Art Sydney. 
1996 - Papunya Tula, Alice Springs. 

The Stamps: $1.10 Ningura Napurrula (Pintupi), untitled, 2002.T
he designs in this painting are associated with the rock hole site of Walyuta, 
south-west of Mantati Outstation, about 70 km west of the Kintore Community. 
The roundel is the rock hole and the lines are the sand hills surrounding the 
area. In mythological times, an old woman passed through this site during 
her travels towards the east. This old woman is said to be a 
'bit of a devil-devil' as she kills and eats people. 

 Notes:

Born around 1938 at Watulka, south of the modern Kiwirrkura community, 
Ningura Napurrula was married to the late Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi with 
whom she moved to Papunya in the early days of the settlement. 
In 1996 she was part of a group of elderly women from Kintore and 
Kiwirrkura who began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in their own right. 
Characteristic of Ningura's work is a strong dynamism and rich linear design-
compositions created with heavy layers of acrylic paint.
 She participated in an initial Papunya Tula Artists exhibition in 1996 and 
featured in several group shows in Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin in 1999. 
She had her first solo exhibition with William Mora Aboriginal Art in 2000, 
and participated in the impressive Kintore Women's Painting for the 
Papunya Tula retrospective at the Art Gallery of NSW. 

  Native titles honoured half a world away

National pride ... Ningura Napurrula was among eight Aboriginal artists whose 
work was selected for an exhibition at the new Musee du Quai Branly, in Paris.

Photo: Bob Pearce, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 31, 2006.