11  SOLD

NGOIA POLLARD NAPALTJARRI (born circa 1948)
‘Swamps west of Nyrripi “My Fathers Country”’
Acrylic on Belgian linen
180 x 180 cm

Ngoia paints her father’s country. This country is sacred Warlipiri territory associated with narratives relating to the Water Snake Dreaming. The oval shapes in her paintings are iconographic representations of the swamps and lakes near Nyirripi (Talarada) North West of Mt. Liebig where Ngoia lives.

PROVENANCE
Watiyawanu Artists of Amunturrngu Aboriginal Corporation, painted at Mt. Leibig 2007,
Certificate number 77-07298

Ngoia was born in Haasts Bluff in the late 1940’s. She attended the Papunya School in the 1960’s along with Lilly Kelly Napangardi. After attending school she worked in the mission kitchen before moving with her husband Jack Tjakamara / Tjampitjinpa to Kintore. Following a period of five years living in Kintore, Ngoia and Jack moved to Mt. Liebig. This move was significant because Mt. Liebig was unoccupied at the time. Living in a humpy with her husband and family, they received rations from Papunya on the basis of the status as an outstation. Ngoia remembers that this food supply was supplemented with hunting in the area around Mt. Liebig. She previously assisted her husband during the time he painted for Papunya Tula Artists and began painting her own works in 1997 after her husband died 16 years ago. Ngoia travelled to Copenhagen, Denmark for a major art exhibition in 2006 with Knud Grothe Gallery, where she was Artist in Residence alongside Lilly Kelly Napangardi and
the lead in a traditional dance for the opening night. She has contributed several works over the past years to group shows and received first prize in the Centralian Advocate Award in 2004 and was the winner of the 23rd Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2006.

REPRESENTED
National Gallery of Australia
Queensland Art Gallery
Thomas Vroom Collection, Amsterdam
Artbank