Wilkinkarra, 2003

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

90 x 60 cm

Est. $800 – $1,200

Hammer $600

Provenance: Warlayirti Artists Aboriginal Corporation, Balgo Hills, WA Private Collection, NSW
Artwork story: Wilkinkarra is Lake Mackay, a vast salt lake in the Gibson Desert, and it was the country of Pauline Sunfly's father, Sunfly Tjampitjin, a senior Kukatja law man and custodian of a section of country called Liltjin, south of Balgo near the lake's edge. Pauline paints her parents' country. Her mother, Bai Bai Napangarti, a Ngardi law woman and senior Elder whose country extends from Mangkayi in the Stansmore Ranges south towards Yagga Yagga, introduced her three daughters to painting at an early age, teaching Tjukurrpa through mark making. Pauline learned her craft sitting with the old people, working alongside them. According to Warlayirti Artists, the lines in Pauline's Wilkinkarra paintings are the dry creek beds that, during the wet season, flow into the lake. Here those creek beds are organised within a ceremonial grid structure, its nodes marked with red circles, each panel holding its own distinct field of concentric forms and radiating marks in deep red, ochre, and green. Jackie Dunn, former senior curator at Artbank, writing in the 2008 touring catalogue Balgo: Contemporary Australian Art from the Balgo Hills, singled out Pauline as the artist who paints Wilkinkarra in astonishing colour combinations.

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Sale 3 · Lot 109

Pauline Sunfly

b. 1958

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

90 x 60 cm

Est. $800 – $1,200

Hammer $600

Provenance: Warlayirti Artists Aboriginal Corporation, Balgo Hills, WA Private Collection, NSW
Artwork story: Wilkinkarra is Lake Mackay, a vast salt lake in the Gibson Desert, and it was the country of Pauline Sunfly's father, Sunfly Tjampitjin, a senior Kukatja law man and custodian of a section of country called Liltjin, south of Balgo near the lake's edge. Pauline paints her parents' country. Her mother, Bai Bai Napangarti, a Ngardi law woman and senior Elder whose country extends from Mangkayi in the Stansmore Ranges south towards Yagga Yagga, introduced her three daughters to painting at an early age, teaching Tjukurrpa through mark making. Pauline learned her craft sitting with the old people, working alongside them. According to Warlayirti Artists, the lines in Pauline's Wilkinkarra paintings are the dry creek beds that, during the wet season, flow into the lake. Here those creek beds are organised within a ceremonial grid structure, its nodes marked with red circles, each panel holding its own distinct field of concentric forms and radiating marks in deep red, ochre, and green. Jackie Dunn, former senior curator at Artbank, writing in the 2008 touring catalogue Balgo: Contemporary Australian Art from the Balgo Hills, singled out Pauline as the artist who paints Wilkinkarra in astonishing colour combinations.