Wintjiya Napaltjarri

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Wintjiya Napaltjarri
Bornca. 1923 to 1934
North-west of Kintore, Northern Territory
NationalityAustralian
Known forPainting
AwardsFinalist, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award: 2007, 2008

Wintjiya Napaltjarri (born between ca. 1923 to 1934) (also spelt Wentjiya, Wintjia or Wentja), and also known as Wintjia Napaltjarri No. 1,

Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. She is the sister of artist Tjunkiya Napaltjarri
; both were wives of Toba Tjakamarra, with whom Wintjiya had five children.

Wintjiya's involvement in contemporary Indigenous Australian art began in 1994 at Haasts Bluff, when she participated in a group painting project and in the creation of batik fabrics. She has also been a printmaker, using drypoint etching. Her paintings typically use an iconography that represents the eggs of the flying ant (waturnuma) and hair-string skirts (nyimparra). Her palette generally involves strong red or black against a white background.

A finalist in the 2007 and 2008 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, Wintjiya's work is held in several of Australia's public collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria. Her work is also held in the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia.

Life

Daytime landscape photo, showing a range of hills with the nearest rising to a rocky red peak, below a blue sky with a few white strings of cloud, and above the tops of eucalyptus trees.
Haasts Bluff, where Wintjiya's family first settled after she was born, and where she began painting

A 2004 reference work on Western Desert painters suggests Wintjiya was born in about 1923;[1] the Art Gallery of New South Wales suggests 1932;[2] expert Vivien Johnson reports two possible years: 1932 or 1934.[3] The ambiguity around the year of birth is in part because Indigenous Australians have a different conception of time, often estimating dates by comparisons with the occurrence of other events.[4]

kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners and may be associated with particular totems. Although often used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans.[5][6] Thus Wintjiya is the element of the artist's name that is specifically hers. She is sometimes referred to as Wintjia Napaltjarri No. 1;[1] there is another artist from the same region, Wintjiya Morgan Napaljarri (also called Wintjiya Reid Napaltjarri), who is known as Wintjiya No. 2.[7]

Wintjiya came from an area north-west

Papunya in the 1960s. In 1981, Kintore was established and the family moved there.[1][3] Her native language is Pintupi, and she speaks almost no English.[8] She is the sister of artist Tjunkiya Napaltjarri,[9] the two women being the second and third wives of Toba Tjakamarra, father (by his first wife, Nganyima Napaltjarri) of one of the prominent founders of the Papunya Tula art movement, Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula.[3][10] Wintjiya and Toba had five children: sons Bundy (born 1953) and Lindsay (born 1961 and now deceased); and daughters Rubilee (born 1955), Claire (born 1958) and Eileen (born 1960). Superficially frail by 2008, she nevertheless had the stamina and agility to teach her granddaughter the skills of chasing and capturing goannas.[3]

Art

Background

A 2006 untitled work by Wintjiya, showing her characteristic palette (stark white with red or black) and iconography (symbols representing the eggs of the flying ant (waturnuma) and hair-string skirts (nyimparra).

Contemporary Indigenous art of the western desert began in 1971 when Indigenous men at Papunya created murals and canvases using western art materials, assisted by teacher

outstations, people were beginning to create art works expressly for exhibition and sale.[13]

Career

Since the 1970s Wintjiya had created artefacts such as

Dreamings"[3] (dreamings are stories used to pass "important knowledge, cultural values and belief systems" from generation to generation).[16] Twenty-five women were involved in planning the works, which included three canvases that were 3 metres (9.8 ft) square, as well as two that were 3 by 1.5 metres (9.8 by 4.9 ft); Tjunkiya and Wintjiya performed a ceremonial dance as part of the preparations.[14] Wintjiya and her sister were determined to participate in the project despite cataracts interfering with their vision.[17] As was the case for Makinti Napanangka, an operation to remove cataracts resulted in a new brightness to Wintjiya's compositions.[3] Sources differ on when Wintjiya and her sister Tjunkiya had their cataracts removed: Johnson suggests 1999, but art centre coordinator Marina Strocchi, who worked closely with the women, states that it was 1994.[8] In the early 2000s Wintjiya and her sister painted at Kintore, but in 2008 they were working from their home: "the widows' camp outside her 'son' Turkey Tolson's former residence".[3][10]

Tjunkiya and her sister Wintjiya did not confine their activities to painting canvases. In 2001 the National Gallery of Victoria purchased a collaborative

Northern Territory Education Department staff Jill Squires and Therese Honan in the months following June 1994. The works, including several by Wintjiya, were not completed until 1995. Circular markings, used by Wintjiya in both these batiks and her subsequent paintings, represent the eggs of the flying ant (waturnuma), one of the main subjects of her art. She also portrays "tree-like organic motifs" and representations of hair-string skirts (nyimparra).[8] The sisters also gained experience with drypoint etching; works produced by Wintjiya in 2004 – Watiyawanu and Nyimpara – are held by the National Gallery of Australia.[19][20]

Wintjiya's work was included in a survey of the history of Papunya Tula painting hosted by Flinders University in the late 1990s. Reviewing the exhibition, Christine Nicholls remarked of Wintjiya's Watanuma that it was a germinal painting, with fine use of muted colour, and showed sensitivity to the relationships between objects and spaces represented in the work.[21] Likewise, Marina Strocchi has noted the contrast between some of the subtle colours used in batik and Wintjiya's characteristic painting palette, which is "almost exclusively stark white with black or red".[8] Hetti Perkins and Margie West have suggested that in paintings by Kintore women artists such as Wintjiya and Tjunkiya, "the viscosity of the painting's surface seems to mimic the generous application of body paint in women's ceremonies".[9]

Wintjiya's painting Rock holes west of Kintore was a finalist in the 2007

Flinders University Art Museum, 1999); Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2000) and Land Marks (National Gallery of Victoria, 2006). Her first solo exhibition was at Woolloongabba Art Gallery in Brisbane in 2005,[15] while in 2010 there was one at a Melbourne gallery. Also in 2010, a print by Wintjiya was selected for inclusion in the annual Fremantle Arts Centre's Print Award.[25] In 2013, she was one of sixteen finalists in the Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards.[26]

Works by Wintjiya are held in major private collections such as Nangara (also known as the Ebes Collection).

Utrecht in the Netherlands, and the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection at the University of Virginia.[3] Works by Wintjiya and her sister Tjunkiya are traded in the auction market, fetching prices of a few thousand dollars.[28][29]

In 2018 Wintjiya's work was included in the exhibition Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia at The Phillips Collection.[30]

Collections

Awards

  • 2007 – finalist, 24th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award[22]
  • 2008 – finalist, 25th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award[23]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 1-876622-47-4
    .
  2. ^ a b "Wintjiya Napaltjarri and Tjunkiya Napaltjarri – Painting". Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art > Paintings. Art Gallery of New South Wales. 1997. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 2 July 2009.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-1-86465-090-7
    .
  4. ISBN 1-876622-47-4
    .
  5. ^ "Kinship and skin names". People and culture. Central Land Council. Archived from the original on 10 November 2010. Retrieved 23 October 2009.
  6. ISBN 978-0-85575-234-7
    .
  7. ISBN 978-1-86465-090-7
    .
  8. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7241-0299-0
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7347-6360-0
    .
  10. ^
    ISBN 978-1-86465-090-7
    .
  11. ISBN 978-0-522-85434-3
    .
  12. ^ Dussart, Francoise (2006). "Canvassing identities: reflecting on the acrylic art movement in an Australian Aboriginal settlement". Aboriginal History. 30: 156–168.
  13. ^
    ISBN 0-7148-3752-0
    .
  14. ^
    Artlink Magazine
    . 26 (4).
  15. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7241-0299-0
    .
  16. ^ "The Dreaming". Culture Portal. Australian Government. 2008. Archived from the original on 29 August 2007. Retrieved 12 January 2011.
  17. ^ Finnane, Kieran (1997). "From first canvas to national collections in three years". Artlink Magazine. 17 (4). Archived from the original on 19 July 2011.
  18. ^ Council of Trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria (2002). Annual Report 2001–2002 (PDF). Melbourne, VIC: National Gallery of Victoria. p. 72. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 26 August 2010.
  19. ^ a b Napaltjarri, Wintjiya. "Nyimpara 2004". Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art. National Gallery of Australia. Archived from the original on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 26 August 2010.
  20. ^ Napaltjarri, Wintjiya. "Watiyawanu 2004". Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art. National Gallery of Australia. Archived from the original on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 26 August 2010.
  21. ^ Nicholls, Christine (1999). "Twenty Five Years and Beyond: Papunya Tula Painting". Artlink Magazine. 19 (4). Archived from the original on 21 August 2006.
  22. ^ a b "Sales information" (PDF). National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory. 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 March 2011. Retrieved 14 October 2009.
  23. ^ a b "Sales information" (PDF). 25th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory. 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 October 2009. Retrieved 14 October 2009.
  24. ^ a b "Wintjiya Napaltjarri – Tingari Women at Watunuma". Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art > Paintings. Art Gallery of New South Wales. 1997. Archived from the original on 20 October 2010. Retrieved 2 July 2009.
  25. ^ "Papunya Tula Artists – News". Papunya Tula Artists. 2010. Archived from the original on 4 February 2011. Retrieved 14 January 2011.
  26. ^ "WINTJIYA NAPALTJARRI – FINALIST IN 2013 WAIAA". Papunya Tula Artists. 2014. Archived from the original on 12 March 2015. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
  27. ^ "The artists". Nangara: the Australian Aboriginal art exhibition. Archived from the original on 19 July 2008. Retrieved 2 July 2009.
  28. ^ "Auction results: Deutscher & Hackett – Important Aboriginal Art". Australian Art Collector. 25 March 2009. Archived from the original on 28 September 2009. Retrieved 25 August 2010.
  29. ^ "Auction results: Mossgreen – Contemporary Aboriginal Art featuring The Ross Jones & The Violet Sheno Collections". Australian Art Collector. 8 April 2008. Archived from the original on 24 July 2008. Retrieved 25 August 2010.
  30. ^ "Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia". The Phillips Collection. Retrieved 14 June 2018.

External links

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