Bush Banana Dreaming, 1992

185 x 120 cm

Est. $2,500 – $3,500

Hammer $2,500

Provenance: Painted in Alice Springs in 1992 Outback Images, Cairns, QLD, Cat No. OI921016 Private Collection, Albany NY
Artwork story: Eunice Napangardi was among the pioneering women painters associated with Papunya and later Alice Springs. Married to Kaapa Tjampitjinpa—one of the founding figures of the Papunya Tula movement—she developed a distinct visual language that combined the rigour of Western Desert iconography with a naturalistic sensibility. In Bush Banana Dreaming, Napangardi depicts the radiating vines and clustered fruits of the bush banana (upurla), a vital food source found growing in rocky crevices of spinifex country. The work belongs to the wider cycle of women’s Dreamings linked to the Kungka Kutjara (Two Women) narratives, in which ancestral women traversed the desert, performing ceremonies and transmitting knowledge. Napangardi’s painting renders this story in concentric bursts of colour and finely modulated dotting, suggesting both the plant’s fecundity and its embeddedness in the land.

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Sale 2 · Lot 14

Eunice Napangardi

early 1950s – 2005

185 x 120 cm

Est. $2,500 – $3,500

Hammer $2,500

Provenance: Painted in Alice Springs in 1992 Outback Images, Cairns, QLD, Cat No. OI921016 Private Collection, Albany NY
Artwork story: Eunice Napangardi was among the pioneering women painters associated with Papunya and later Alice Springs. Married to Kaapa Tjampitjinpa—one of the founding figures of the Papunya Tula movement—she developed a distinct visual language that combined the rigour of Western Desert iconography with a naturalistic sensibility. In Bush Banana Dreaming, Napangardi depicts the radiating vines and clustered fruits of the bush banana (upurla), a vital food source found growing in rocky crevices of spinifex country. The work belongs to the wider cycle of women’s Dreamings linked to the Kungka Kutjara (Two Women) narratives, in which ancestral women traversed the desert, performing ceremonies and transmitting knowledge. Napangardi’s painting renders this story in concentric bursts of colour and finely modulated dotting, suggesting both the plant’s fecundity and its embeddedness in the land.