Josephine Nangala

Nyinmi

2020

This painting relates to a venomous ancestral Snake who lives at a soakage called Nyinmi. The Snake had travelled to Nyinmi from Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), and when she encountered a woman and her two sons. a fight broke out between them and the woman eventually killed the Snake, who entered the earth at Nyinmi when he died. A group of ancestral woman gathered at this same site to perform the ceremonies and sing the songs associated with the area, then later continued their journey east through Kiwirrkurra. Along their journey they gathered kampurrarrpa (desert raisins) and pura (bush tomatoes).

Language Groups: Kukatja and Manyjilyjarra
Date: Born 1950

Josephine Nangala was born in the desert west of Kiwirrkurra near Tjikulpa. She grew up travelling with her family between Nyirla, her traditional Country, and other sites along the Canning Stock Route. After a helicopter took her sick aunt and brother-in-law to Balgo Mission from Natawalu in 1957, Josephine and her family followed on foot. Josephine received schooling from the nuns and priests at the Catholic mission in Balgo, where she went on to meet and marry Charlie Wallabi Tjungurrayi. The couple moved to Kiwirrkurra, and Josephine began to paint around the site’s clinics. Completing her first canvases for Papunya Tula Artists in the mid 1990s, Josephine paints Tjukurrpa of Tingarri traveling through her country. In 2000, Josephine danced in the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics Games. Her work was included in the landmark exhibition Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route at the National Museum of Australia.

JOSEPHINE NANGALA, Nyinmi, 2020

Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. 24 × 215/8 in. (61 × 55 cm). Commissioned by Richard Klingler and Jane Slatter for Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu | Past and Present Together.

Josephine Nangala collecting pura (bush tomatoes).

Photo courtesy of Papunya Tula Artists.

In 2000, Josephine Nangala danced in the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics Games.

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