DOROTHY NAPANGARDI | KARNTAKURLANGU JUKURRPA, WOMEN’S DREAMING

Commissioned by Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs, catalogue no. GW 3890 (accompanied by a copy of the original documentation from Gallery Gondwana)

The Thomas Vroom Collection, The Netherlands

By utilising a limited palette to create works grand in scale, Dorothy Napangardi's extraordinary spatial aesthetic became fully realised in her greatest works. In Karntakurlangu Jukurrpa Napangardi conjures shimmering fields of movement, evoking the pathway taken by a large group of Warlpiri Ancestral women dancing near Mina Mina, the artist's birthplace and homeland. Mina Mina encapsulates a large section of an expansive salt-lake, Lake Mackay, Ngayurru in the Warlpiri language. This country is owned by women of the Napangardi and Napanangka skin groups (subsections) and their male counterparts. Bounded by three different language/cultural groups, including the Warlpiri, this salt-lake is located on the far western reaches of Warlpiri country.

Napangardi realised these extraordinary optical effects by creating an elaborate, although loose, grid pattern evoking the physical environment and also human movement across that harsh terrain. By this means Napangardi merged the interactions of both physical (environmental) and human geography. Colour selection also played a significant part in this work. While Napangardi has eschewed the use of pink in this tiny vermiform-like grid patterning, the work reflects the sheen emanating from Ngayurru, which has the capacity to cause desert blindness. With no specific vantage point from which to observe this work, viewers’ eyes are compelled to dance across the composition as a whole, rather than dwell upon any single element within it. Little wonder that Napangardi’s oeuvre has been compared with that of Bridget Riley, despite the fact that their cultural and historical underpinnings couldn’t be more different.

 * Karnta = women; -kurlangu is usually expressed as Karnta-kurlangu, meaning literally something along the lines of Women-owning/belonging

Dr. Christine Nicholls