Biography

(c. 1938 – 2013) Ningura Napurrula was a Pintupi artist born at Watulka, south of present-day Kiwirrkurra in Western Australia. She grew up living a traditional desert life before travelling to Papunya with her husband, Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi, and their family in the early 1960s. The family later returned west as Pintupi communities were established closer to their ancestral Country. Ningura began painting through the Kintore–Haasts Bluff women’s painting project in 1995 and completed her first works for Papunya Tula Artists the following year. Dreaming & Country: Wirrulnga Much of Ningura’s work relates to women’s Tjukurrpa associated with Wirrulnga, a rockhole site east of Kiwirrkurra. Her paintings refer to ancestral women travelling through Country, gathering food and performing ceremonies at important sites. Wirrulnga is closely connected with women’s lives and birth. Ningura also painted other sites and stories from her Country, drawing upon the cultural knowledge and responsibilities she held as a senior Pintupi woman. Style and Technique Ningura worked in acrylic on linen, developing compositions of interlocking lines, concentric forms, arcs and repeated dots. Her paintings often centre on roundels representing sites or rockholes, joined by pathways and surrounded by layered linear structures. Rather than describing the landscape literally, she organised these elements into dense, strongly resolved fields of movement. Her brushwork could be direct and irregular, allowing variations in scale and spacing to remain visible across the surface. Ningura’s Palette Ningura frequently worked with a restrained palette of black, white, ochre, rust and earthy red. The contrast between pale lines and darker grounds gave many of her paintings a clear graphic strength, while closely layered marks created depth and movement. Other works introduced stronger oranges, purples and reds, but colour generally remained secondary to the structure and rhythm of the composition. For the Collector Although Ningura began painting comparatively late in life, she established an extensive body of work during a career spanning nearly two decades. In 2003, one of her paintings was reproduced on an Australia Post international stamp celebrating Papunya Tula art. Her work was also selected for the Musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac in Paris, where her design was translated into a permanent architectural installation within the museum building. Her paintings are held in significant public collections in Australia and internationally.