Ningura Naparrula

Ningura Napurrula was born in 1938 at Watulka in Central Australia. She married the renowned Pintupi artist Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi, and together with their son Maurice, travelled to the Papunya community in the 1960s, after having encountered a Welfare Patrol. Ningura Napurrula commenced painting for the Papunya Tula Artists Cooperative in 1996.

Ningura’s aesthetic is somewhat different from other Kintore women, as she has developed Yala Yala Gibbs’s classic Pintupi style into her own softer, more organic vision. Ningura Napurrrula paints very delicately, slowly building up her forms, as she recalls the mythological events of her Ancestors. Her subject matter focuses on the travels of her female Ancestors, the sacred sites that they passed, and the mythological significance of the bush tucker that they collected. These travels and rituals help to explain contemporary customs and the ceremonial lives of these powerful Pintupi women.

Ningura Napurrula has exhibited extensively within Australia and internationally including in Aborigena at the Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, Italy (2001); Australian Contemporary Aboriginal Art in Prague, Toskansky Place, Prague, Czech Republic (2003); and Masterpieces from the Western Desert, Gavin Graham Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2003). Her work is represented in the following Collections: the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra; the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.