Songlines Aboriginal Art: Papunya Paintings, Page 21 ~ aboriginal-art.com




 
DBP 7. The Women Who Turned to Stone, Pantjiya Nungurrayi, 2002, 48" x 24" (122 x 61cms) For Sale

Pantjiya Nungurrayi is one of a number of Pintupi women painters who emerged in the late 90's, taking up painting after living in the shadows of their husbands and sons, many of whom had been painting since the 1970's. Like many of the works of her contemporaries Pantjiya uses a very restricted palate, primarily black and white, and in this case the yellow ochre highlights which make the symbols and pattern really pop. The white field is essentially composed of dots which have been allowed to fuse together into a rich confectionate surface. The black figurative elements are the ground of the painting which has been allowed to show through the field of white dots and form the symbols and linear patterning as negative space.

In the Dreaming, a group of women camped at the present day site of Browns Bore (Kungkiyunti) to perform ceremonies. During their travels they gathered the edible fruit pura (bush tomato) and mangata (quandong). The plant like shapes represent desert oak trees and and the lines framing the inner field of white are the sandhills in the country through which they traveled. The women later traveled west to a site called Ngutjulnga, just to the east of the present day community of Kintore, where they all perished from cold as they were unable to get their fire-sticks to light. A small group of rounded rocks at this site is said to represent the women as they hunched their backs against the cold.

 

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