No.47
2011-2015, Acrylic on Belgian linen
183 x 245 cm
SOLD
12 June - 8 July 2017
Naata Nungurrayi: Iconography
ICONOGRAPHY is Naata Nungurrayi’s final body of work. Intrinsically linked to Nungurrayi’s own culture, these icons represent the beginnings of all human language and art before people became sedentary – examples of which can be found on ancient petroglyphs (rock carvings) on all habitable continents around the world. They are historical documents that will soon be our only link to the genesis of culture. Completed over five years, Iconography is recognised as one of the most significant bodies of indigenous art completed since the Papunya boards of the early 1970’s.
These paintings comprise the initial outline of a work which Naata would then cover with dots to produce a finished painting. This original outline, however, is to an Aboriginal artist the most important part of the painting process as it embodies the story concerning a particular dreaming site which is the subject matter of the painting. The process of dotting to produce the finished work is what to our Western eyes makes desert art so attractive and visually striking, however to the Aboriginal artist the fields of coloured dots are simply a means of highlighting the story contained in the underlying outline.
- Christopher Simon, Managing Director Yanda Aboriginal Art, NT.
Naata Nungurrayi is a tribal Pintupi nomad; she was born c.1932 at the Rockhole site of Kumil, west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia, her western desert people were the last of the traditional nomads to wander into the new world. She came from a sophisticated culture where art and song was as important as food gathering. Nungurrayi was never influenced by the iconographies of Christian and Enlightenment thinking. Her vision was raw and had more in common with those societies who, like her, utilized squares, circles, and triangles and parallel lines to represent topography. In aboriginal art the circle is used as a boundary and an enclosure in that it marks a place of a gathering or an event as much as it represents creation and manifestation.
Naata Nungurrayi first started painting in 1994. Her paintings deal with ‘woman’s Law’, and the campsite experiences of her people, gathering seeds, fruit and berries, the preparation and cooking of food. Essentially her prime interest is in women’s business. She is concerned with the dreaming’s that are inextricably fused with women’s sacred sites and women’s ceremonies, however like most traditional elders will not disclose any ceremonial content.
From 2011-2014 she became less interested in dotting her paintings in the usual manner of the traditional desert painters, preferring to use primarily lines and circle formations to represent the iconography of her country. These works are culturally and historically extremely important. They are topographical road maps of her country; they are the story and the journey of her life.
Naata is firmly established as one of Australia’s leading artists. A work measuring 150cm x 180cm achieved a record price of $216,000 in Sotheby’s Auction 2007 and was followed up in 2015 by a stunning piece of the same size reaching the top price – again, $216,000, at the prestigious Laverty Collection Auction. Naata’s artworks have been accepted in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Telstra Awards every year since first being entered in 2000 – an incredible recognition of the standing of this artist. She was also named among the Top 50 of Australia’s Most Collectable Artists in Australian Art Collector January – March, 2004. In 2003, one of Naata’s paintings appeared on an Australia Post stamp special edition titled Art of Papunya Tula.
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