Walangkura Napanangka

Exhibited at the much-heralded annual exhibition of Pintupi art, at Papunya Tula Artists in Alice Springs in 2007, Tjinttjintjin, 2006, is the pinnacle of Walangura Napanangka’s celebrated oeuvre. Completed during her critical mid-career period, it is a work of dramatic scale and composition. The tremulous roundels, sweeping lines and grid-like patterns are meticulously finished in Walangkura’s striking palette of red, yellow, and cream. 

A reticent member of the boisterous women’s painting group at Walungurru (Kintore), Walangkura was known to retreat to a quiet corner of their shared studio and dedicate her energies to her painting practice. Each of her large, seemingly abstract landscape paintings depicted the geographical features in the area through which the ancestral being Kutungka Napanangka travelled. As an old woman Kutungka travelled alone, encountering other ancestral beings and humans, her actions forming the desert landscape through which she travelled.

Tjintjintjin, 2006 depicts the rockhole and cave site of Tjintjintjin, just to the west of the Walungurru where Kutungka stopped on her travels. At the site of Malparingya, north-west of Tjintjintjin, Kutungka dug an enormous hole in search of an ancestral kuniya (snake) that lived underground. Eventually unearthing it, she killed it, cooked it in her fire and ate it before continuing her travels east to Muruntji, south-west of Mt Liebig. At Muruntji Kutungka was accosted by a young boy, only to discover that he was one of a group of young boys at this site. She immediately gave chase, eventually ensnaring all but the culprit who managed to escape. To avenge the boy’s taunts, she killed the group of boys and cooked them in a large fire. She continued her travels east and then entered the earth at the site of Kaltarra.

Luke Scholes

Luke Scholes is former curator of Aboriginal art at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. He has curated multiple award-winning exhibitions and written extensively about Aboriginal art.