PROVENANCE
Authenticated and curated for the MCA by Roslyn Premont, Gallery Gondwana
Chris Deutscher and Karen Woodbury Collection, Vic
Private Collection NSW
This work, Dorothy’s magnificent rendition of Salt on Mina Mina, 2002, was the largest of several masterpieces in the artist’s retrospective exhibition Dancing Up Country; The Art of Dorothy Napangardi at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the year after she won the prestigious 18th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award.
ARTWORK STORY
Dorothy began painting organic forms depicting bush foods in vibrant colours., alongside other Warlpiri women in Alice Springs in 1987. A decade later she reached a significant turning point in her practice when she began producing distinctive paintings that abstractly mapped the sacred landscapes of Warlpiri country.
These works, which traced the grid-like patterns of the salt encrustations on the Mina Mina clay pans, were less contrived and increasingly spare, all detail pared back to the barest essentials. They explore the Women's Digging Sticks Dreaming and other stories related to the travels of the Karntakurlangu, and compel the spectator's eye to dance across the painted surface, just as these ancestral women danced in the hundreds across the country during the region's creation. As Dorothy's career developed, her extraordinary spatial sense enabled her to create mimetic grids of the salt encrustations across the claypans of Mina Mina. The lines of white dots trace the travels of her female ancestors as they danced their way, in joyous exultation, through the saltpans, spinifex and sandhills, clutching their digging sticks in their outstretched hands.
This painting, Salt on the Mina Mina, can be seen in the photograph of the exhibition installation which accompanies the work. Its' strong provenance significantly enhances the long-term value of the work, which is arguably one of Napangardi's finest.
At the time of her untimely death in June 2013, Dorothy was firmly established as the leading female Warlpiri artist of the entire Aboriginal art movement.
COMMUNITY/REGION
Tanami Desert
LANGUAGE
Warlpiri
BIOGRAPHY
Dorothy Napangardi spent her early childhood living a nomadic life at Mina Mina near Lake Mackay in the Tanami Desert during the late 1950s and early 1960s. She recalled camping at claypans and soakages with her mother, Jeanie Lewis Napururrla, learning to collect the plentiful bush tucker and grinding seeds for damper cooked on hot ashes. This idyllic life came to a close when her family was forcibly relocated to the government settlement at Yuendumu…Continue Reading
PROVENANCE
Authenticated and curated for the MCA by Roslyn Premont, Gallery Gondwana
Chris Deutscher and Karen Woodbury Collection, Vic
Private Collection NSW
This work, Dorothy’s magnificent rendition of Salt on Mina Mina, 2002, was the largest of several masterpieces in the artist’s retrospective exhibition Dancing Up Country; The Art of Dorothy Napangardi at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the year after she won the prestigious 18th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award.
ARTWORK STORY
Dorothy began painting organic forms depicting bush foods in vibrant colours., alongside other Warlpiri women in Alice Springs in 1987. A decade later she reached a significant turning point in her practice when she began producing distinctive paintings that abstractly mapped the sacred landscapes of Warlpiri country.
These works, which traced the grid-like patterns of the salt encrustations on the Mina Mina clay pans, were less contrived and increasingly spare, all detail pared back to the barest essentials. They explore the Women's Digging Sticks Dreaming and other stories related to the travels of the Karntakurlangu, and compel the spectator's eye to dance across the painted surface, just as these ancestral women danced in the hundreds across the country during the region's creation. As Dorothy's career developed, her extraordinary spatial sense enabled her to create mimetic grids of the salt encrustations across the claypans of Mina Mina. The lines of white dots trace the travels of her female ancestors as they danced their way, in joyous exultation, through the saltpans, spinifex and sandhills, clutching their digging sticks in their outstretched hands.
This painting, Salt on the Mina Mina, can be seen in the photograph of the exhibition installation which accompanies the work. Its' strong provenance significantly enhances the long-term value of the work, which is arguably one of Napangardi's finest.
At the time of her untimely death in June 2013, Dorothy was firmly established as the leading female Warlpiri artist of the entire Aboriginal art movement.
COMMUNITY/REGION
Tanami Desert
LANGUAGE
Warlpiri
BIOGRAPHY
Dorothy Napangardi spent her early childhood living a nomadic life at Mina Mina near Lake Mackay in the Tanami Desert during the late 1950s and early 1960s. She recalled camping at claypans and soakages with her mother, Jeanie Lewis Napururrla, learning to collect the plentiful bush tucker and grinding seeds for damper cooked on hot ashes. This idyllic life came to a close when her family was forcibly relocated to the government settlement at Yuendumu…Continue Reading
