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This website was developed for the exhibition Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu | Past & Present Together: Fifty Years of Papunya Tula Artists that was on view at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia from 2021-23 and the Embassy of Australia in Washington, DC in 2024. It was made possible by our creative partnership with Papunya Tula Artists and the generous support of UVA Arts Council. Site design by Urban Fugitive for V21 Artspace.
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Ningura Napurrula

Wirrulnga
2001

This painting depicts designs associated with the rockhole site of Wirrulnga, east of Kiwirrkura Community in Western Australia. The roundels in the painting represent the rockholes at the site. In ancestral times a group of women of the Napaltjarri and Napurrula kinship subsections camped at Wirrulnga, having travelled from the rockhole site of Ngaminya further west. Wirrulnga is a site which is associated with birth and the lines extending from the roundels symbolise the shape of a pregnant woman of the Napaltjarri kinship subsection who gave birth at the site. While at Wirrulnga the women also made spun hair-string for making Nyimparra (Hair String Skirts), which are worn during ceremonies.

This painting was included in the exhibition Dreaming their Way. Organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C it was the first exhibition focusing on the work on Indigenous Australian women artists to tour the United States.

That's what I paint, all of those women traveling from Ngami in the west to Wirrul. They came here to give birth, and for ceremony. Then from here they travelled to Walkalkarra and then Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), where the newborn babies were "smoked" or held over a fire to make them strong and protect them against evil spirits. It is my mother's country; she gave birth at this site a long time ago.

NINGURA NAPURRULA

Language Group: Ngaatjatjarra
Dates: 1938–2013

Ningura Napurrula was born at Watulka, south of Kiwirrkurra. She married Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi and together they had Morris Gibson Tjapaltjarri. After meeting with Jeremy Long’s Welfare Patrol they moved to Papunya. Ningura began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1996. In 1999 she contributed to the Kintore women’s collaborative painting for the Western Desert Dialysis Appeal. In 2003, one of her paintings was used on an Australia Post international stamp. In 2004, her work was incorporated into the architecture of the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. In 2006, her painting Wirrulnga 2001 (also included in Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu) was included in the exhibition Dreaming their Way at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. Ningura died at Kintore in November 2013.

Are you related to this artist? Are you a scholar of artwork from the Papunya Tula movement? Please contact us at kluge-ruhe@virginia.edu if you would like to add something to this page or see something that is missing or incorrect.
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