Bio
Dorothy Napangardi (Australian Aboriginal 1945-2013) Bio
Dorothy was a Warlpiri speaking contemporary Indigenous Australian artist born in the Tanami Desert and who worked in Alice Springs Dorothy was the daughter of Indigenous Australians Jeannie Lewis Napururrla and Paddy Lewis Japanangka born in the early 1950s in a location referred to as Mina Mina near Lake Mackay in the Tanami Desert Napangardi (in Warlpiri) or ‘Napangati’ (in Western Desert dialects) is a skin name one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the 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 they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans Thus ‘Dorothy’ is the element of the artist’s name that is specifically hers Dorothy grew up in the settlement town of Yuendumu and spent most of her life in Alice Springs where she began painting in 1987 Dorothy had little formal schooling but was instructed in the historic Dreaming of her people ‘Dreaming’ is an imprecise English translation of the Warlpiri word ‘Jukurrpa’, which describes the origins and journeys of ancestral beings in the land and identifies the sacred places where the spirits reside The Jukurrpa theme generally is one of the inseparability of the self from the environment and usually includes travelling across the land These are notions than can also be found in Napangardi’s art with its profusion of intersecting lines suggesting spiritual meaning and evocative depth In the words of a Warlpiri speaker quoted in a catalogue of Napangardi’s work: “To me, Dorothy’s work is like Yapa (people) running through and across their country moving across their pathways when they go travelling.” The contemporary Indigenous Australian art movement began in the western desert in 1971 when Indigenous men at Papunya took up painting led by elders such as Kaapa Tjampitjinpa and assisted by teacher Geoffrey Bardon This initiative which used acrylic paints to create designs representing body painting and ground sculptures rapidly spread across Indigenous communities of central Australia particularly following the commencement of a government-sanctioned art program in central Australia in 1983 By the 1980s and 1990s such work was being exhibited internationally The first artists including all of the founders of the Papunya Tula artists’ company had been men and there was resistance amongst the Pintupi men of central Australia to women painting However many women in the communities wished to participate and in the 1990s many began to create paintings In the western desert communities such as Kintore Yuendumu Balgo and on the outstations people were beginning to create art works expressly for exhibition and sale In this context in Alice Springs Dorothy Napangardi began to learn alongside Polly Watson Napangardi Margaret Lewis and Eunice Napangardi
Career
In 2001 Napangardi won first prize in the 18th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award for her work Salt on Mina Mina after winning lesser prizes in the same festival in 1991 and 1999
She had many exhibitions in Australia and overseas In 2002 the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney hosted an exhibition of Napangardi’s work Discussing the artist’s work expert Christine Nicholls wrote that “Dorothy Napangardi’s success as an artist lies in her ability to evoke a strong sense of movement on her canvases an effect she achieves because of her remarkable spatial sense and compositional ability… Dorothy’s work can be appreciated on multiple levels” though indigenous commentators tend to see painting as “a stage for human activity rather than seeing the geometric aspects of the work” At the time of the exhibition fellow artist Kathleen Petyarre thought there were parallels between Napangardi’s approach to her work and that of Emily Kngwarreye
Internationally US-based Crown Point Press published a series of her prints and exhibited her paintings and prints in its gallery in San Francisco The Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco exhibited her paintings in a solo exhibition in 2005 She was included in a range of group shows including in 2001 at the Sammlung Essl Museum in Vienna Austria
Napangardi’s work is found in many museums around the world including the National Gallery of Australia Canberra the Art Gallery of South Australia Adelaide Queensland Museum Brisbane the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia Charlottesville the Linden Museum Stuttgart Germany and the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City She is represented by Gallery Gondwana in Alice Springs and Sydney
The painting depicts a major women’s ceremonial site known as Mina Mina the artist’s custodial country located near Chilla Well in the Tanami Desert North West of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory Using a delicate red and white mosaic design set against a black background During the Jukurrpa ancestral women of the Napangardi and Napanangka sub-section groups (aunt/niece relationship in which knowledge is passed from one to the other) gathered to collect ceremonial digging sticks (Karlangu that had emerged from the ground They then proceeded east performing rituals of song and dance through its crustations of salt, spinifex clumps and over the sand hills to the place known as Jankinyi A large belt of Eucalyptus trees(Casuarina Decaisneana) now stand where the digging sticks once were
