NINGURA NAPURRULA

Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs
Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne
Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 25 July 2005, lot 167
Private collection, USA

The subject of this painting is a women’s ceremony where participants carry fighting clubs or nulla-nullas (the vertical black shapes) and wear belts spun from human hair (the sections of thinner straight lines). The arcs represent sandhills in the area of Wirrulnga, the site of a rockhole east of the community of Kiwirrkura in Western Australia. The theme of this work is related to the painting commissioned by the Musée du quai Branly in Paris for the ceiling of one of its buildings. The museum opened to the public earlier this year. Sandhills of Wirrulnga 2001, is the same size as another work by the artist, Women at Wirrulnga, 2006, that was auctioned by Sotheby's in Paris in June this year to raise funds for the Western Desert Dialysis Appeal

Cf. For another painting of the same subject and scale by the artist, see Untitled (Wirrulnga), 2000, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, illustrated in Perkins, H., Tradition Today: Indigenous Art in Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2004, p.109

This painting is sold with an accompanying Papunya Tula Artists certificate