Naata Nungurrayi Pintupi language group, circa 1932-2021
"Naata Nungurrayi paints a densely stippled, horizontal field of flame-colored spots against earthen brown and black, a stark contrast that establishes its glowing vibrancy."
-Christopher Knight
Provenance
The Artist, painted at Kintore, Northern Territory
Papunya Tula Artists, Northern Territory, cat. no. NN 1003039
Private Collection, Melbourne
D’Lan Contemporary, Melbourne
Collection of Steve Martin & Anne Stringfield, New York
Exhibitions
Desert Painters of Australia Part II: With Works from the Collection of Steve Martin and Anne Stringfield, Gagosian, Beverly Hills, 26 July – 6 September 2019
60 over 50: 60 Paintings from 50 Years of Australian First Nations Art, UOVO, New York, May 2023
Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu (Past and Present Together), Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Provo, UT, 18 July – 6 December 2025; The Grey Art Museum, New York University, New York, NY, 20 January – 11 April 2026; The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, 26 September 2026 - April 2027
Literature
Christopher Knight, 'Review: Spectacular aboriginal paintings from Australia burst with deep, sacred beauty', Los Angeles Times, 19 August 2019
Fred Myers and Henry Skerritt. ‘Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu (Past and Present Together): Fifty Years of Papunya Tula Artists’, 2022, plate 88, p. 222-223 (illus.)
Vanessa Merlino and Luke Scholes, 60 over 50: 60 Paintings from 50 Years of Australian First Nations Art, UOVO, 2023, p. 20-21 (illus.)
“Naata Nungurrayi was born in the Pollock Hills in the Gibson Desert, Western Australia. It is a harsh environment with limited diversity. Many Western Desert families were driven out of the area by the cyclic drought conditions and traversed eastwards towards government settlements. This vast sand desert country where Naata travelled and camped until adulthood is the defining subject of her paintings. Drawing from the ancestral narratives of the places she represents, she sings her paintings into being. Through this song, her dynamic performances materialise interchangeably as topographic and iconographic maps of Country, evoking sandhills, water sources, and the shifting hues of the desert.” (Vanessa Merlino and Luke Scholes, 60 over 50: 60 Paintings from 50 Years of Australian First Nations Art, 2023, p. 20)
-
Naata Nungurrayi, Marrapinti, 2006
