Mary Napangati

Tjutalpi

2020

This painting depicts a rockhole called Tjutalpi, east of the community of Kiwirrkurra. In the Tjukurrpa, a group of ancestral men and women traveled here and performed the dances and songs connected with the place. They also gathered pura (bush tomatoes), kampurarrpa (desert raisins) and wood used for making wana (digging sticks). The circles represent the soakage waters found at the rockhole.

Language Groups: Pintupi and Warlpiri
Date: Born 1949

Mary was born near Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) circa 1955, and is the third child of a family of four girls and one boy. Her family lived in the vicinity of Lappi Lappi, located towards the northern area of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), until they walked to the Mt Doreen cattle station west of Yuendumu. By this time Mary was approximately ten years old. Her family worked on the station and the children were driven by truck to attend school at Yuendumu. When the station owner died, the family moved to Yuendumu, where she married, later moving further west to Nyirrpi and giving birth to two boys. After her husband passed away, Mary remarried the well-known Papunya Tula artist Ronnie Tjampitjinpa and moved to Kintore, where she now lives and paints.

MARY NAPANGATI, Tjutalpi, 2020

Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. 24 × 21 5/8 in. (61 × 55 cm). Commissioned by Richard Klingler and Jane Slatter for Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu | Past and Present Together.

Mary Napangati at Papunya Tula Artists, Mparntwe (Alice Springs).

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