Lot 1

MILLIE SKEEN NAMPITJIN

c. 1932 – 1997

Nundginurra, Great Sandy Desert, 1995
synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 90 x 60 cm

Est AUD: $5,000 - $7,000

PROVENANCE

Warlayirti Artists Aboriginal Corporation, Balgo Hills, WA, Cat No. 375/95
Cooee Art, Sydney, NSW, Cat No. 784
Private Collection, Vic

Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Warlayirti Artists

ARTWORK STORY

Women singing, clapping and dancing in ceremony, clapsticks in their hands - this is women's law business, and the Warlayirti Artists certificate maps it with precision: the clapstick at the upper register, the women singing to the left, the women dancing to the right, the patu at the lower centre, the ground beneath them. Nundginurra is in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia, the country where this ceremony belongs.

Millie Skeen was born some 300 kilometres south of Balgo in her grandparents' country and travelled north as a young girl with her sister Rita Kuninyi and Rita's husband Albert Nagomara. She later married Tommy Skeen Tjakamarra, a Ngardi man and senior custodian of the country to the immediate south of Balgo. Warlayirti Artists describe her paintings as having a celebratory air - and this one earns that description. She began painting in 1986, one of the first women at Balgo to do so, and in 1989 her work was included in Balgo's inaugural exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia