17   SOLD

NANCY NANINURRA NAPANANGKA (born circa 1932)

Acrylic on canvas
150 x 100 cm

Nancy has painted some country located south of Balgo in the Great Sandy Desert.
This country is known as Minna Minna, named for the tjurrnu (soakwaters)
featured in the centre of the painting. This country is important women’s country,
and women of the Nungurrayi and Napanangka skin groups dance for this country.
During the Tjukurrpa (Dreamtime) women danced around a central circle, and by
their continuous dancing formed the tjurnu at Minna Minna.

PROVENANCE
Warlayirti Artists, Balgo Hills, Western Australia, painted 2004,
Catalogue Number 317/04

Nancy is a Kukatja woman whose country lies to the south and east of Balgo,
between Nyirripi, Kintore and Lappi Lappi. Nancy grew up on these lands and in
her early twenties a white man brought her family to Mount Doreen Station near
Yuendumu and they settled there for a while.
Nancy married a Walpiri man from the Tanami area and lived in Yuendumu, then at
the Granites where he worked in the mine while Nancy brought up their first two
children, a daughter and a son. The family gradually moved northwest from the
Tanami to Gordon Downs where they had another son. Nancy has outlived her
husband and is settled at Balgo with other Warlpiri people.
Together with her sisters, Nancy is an important law woman with responsibility to
maintain the song cycles of her country.

REPRESENTED
National Gallery of Victoria
Araluen Collection, Alice Springs
Robert Holmes à Court Collection
Kluge Ruhe Collection, USA