Eunice Jack Napanagka (b.1940)

Biography
Eunice started painting with the opening of the Ikuntji Women’s Centre in 1992. Her father was Tutuma Tkapangarti, one of the irst men to paint or Papunya Tula. He was a senior man of the southern-most Winanpa Pintupi Association.

Eunice paints her country which includes Tjukurla, Warakuna, Lupul, Punkuipirri, Tutuma’s mother’s country, Titurla Nangala), Mantamaru, Wurlilya (west of Tjukurla), Mulpunga and her birthplace Kuruuldu. Her mother was from the Walpiri side of Lake Mackay, Winparrku in Western Australia.

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2000            Tjilkamata and Watuya (mit Alice Nampitjinpa)
2000 – 2004 commercial gallery exhibitiona in Melbourne and Sydney

Selected Group Exhibitions
1993    Northern Territory Art Award, Alice Springs
1994    11th National Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
1994    Australian High Commission und Hotel Shangri-la, Singapore
1994    Northern Territory Art Award, Alice Springs
1994    2nd National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award Exhibition, Old Parliament House, Canberra
1995    Alice Springs Art Prize, Alice Springs
1995    Ikuntji: New Art from the Western Desert, Framed - The Darwin Gallery, Darwin
1995    Minyma Tjukurrpa, Haasts Bluff/Kintore Canvas Project, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide
1995    Northern Territory Art Award, Alice Springs
1995-96 12th National Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
1995-96 Westpac Gallery, Melbourne; Brisbane City Hall Art Gallery, Brisbane
1996    13th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards Exhibition, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
1996    Australian Heritage Commission. National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award Exhibition, Canberra
1996    Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
1996    Native Title Now, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide
1997    14th National Aboriginal Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery, Northern Territory, Darwin
1997    Dreamings, Arnhem, Netherlands
1997    Ikuntji Tjuta in Canberra, Alliance Francaise, Canberra
1997    The Desert Mob Art Show, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
1998    Adelaide Fringe Festival, Desart Exhibition, Adelaide
1998    Bischoffs, California, USA
1998    Culture Store, Art Gallery, Rotterdam. Netherlands
1998    Dreamings, Vlaams-Europeesch Conferentiecentrum, Brüssel, Belgium
1998    Ikuntji Paintings, Gallerie Dusseldorf, Perth
1998    The Desert Mob Show, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
1999    Ikuntji Tjuta, Campbelltown City Art Gallery, Campbelltown
1999    Indigenous Art of the Dreamtime, Vereinte Nationen und Australische Vertretung bei den Vereinten Nationen, New York, USA
1999    Spirit Country: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Gantner Myer Collection, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, USA
2000    5th National Indigenous Heritage Art Award. The Art of Place, Canberra
2000    Desert Mob, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
2001    Our Country, Pintupi Women from Haasts Bluff, Raft Artspace, Darwin
2002    Adelaide Fringe Festival Desart Exhibition, Adelaide
2002    Desert Mob, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
2003    Desert Mob, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
2004    Carole Queriye Gallery, London,
2004    Desert Divas, Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs
2004    Desert Mob, Araluen Centre for the Arts, Alice Springs
2004    Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs
2004    Gallery Hossack, London
2004    Red Dot Gallery, Singapore
2005    Red Dot Gallery, Singapore
2005   "Desert Divas", Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs
2005    Art Frankfurt, Frankfurt
2005    Elisabeth Baehr, Art Frankfurt Germany
2005    "Big Country", Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs
2005    Strata, Araluen Alice Springs
2005    Desert Mob, Araluen Alice Springs
2005    Gallery Gabrielle, Melbourne
2006    Gadfly Gallery, Perth, "Senior Aboriginal Women Artists of
Central Australia"
2006    Gondwana, Alice Springs, "Big Country"
2006    Red Dot Gallery, Singapore, " Anangu"
2006    Araluen Gallery, Alice Springs, "DesertMob"
2007    Palya Art, Darwin/Sydney, "Palya @ Mary Place"
2007    Bandigan Gallery, Sydney, "Yaiti Yamimi"
2007    Ochre Gallery, Melbourne, "Group Show"
2007    Artkelch, Germany, "Women's Business"
2007    Araleun Gallery, Alice Springs, "Desert Mob"
2007    Palya Art, Melbourne, "Group Show"
2007    Framed Gallery, Darwin, "Best Of The Best"
2007    Australia Dreaming Art, Melbourne, "Group Show"
2007    Short St Gallery, Broome, "Group Show"
2008    Gondwana Gallery, Alice Springs & Sydney, "Divas of the
Desert"
2008    QDos Gallery, Lorne (Victoria), "Ikuntji Show"
2008    Kingsfisher Gallery, Perth, Western Australia, "Ikuntji Women
Painters"
2008    Palya Art @ Mary Place, Sydney, "Group Show"

Collections
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
Campbelltown Regional Gallery, Campbelltown
Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide
University of Tasmania, Hobart
Supreme Court of the Northern Territory, Darwin
Thomas Vroom-Sammlung, Amsterdam
Bailleau Myer Collection, de Young Museum, San Francisco

Publications
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Electoral Calendar, 1996
Ikuntji Tjuta. Touring. Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery (Hrsg.), Campbelltown 1999
Ikuntji. Paintings from Haasts Bluff 1992-1994. Strocchi, M. (Hrsg.), IAD Press, Alice Springs 1995
Isaacs, Jennifer, Spirit Country. Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art. Grant Hardie Books, Melbourne 1999
The Fifth National Indigenous Heritage Art Award. The Art of Place. Australian Heritage Commission (Hrsg.). Canberra 2000,
The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture. Kleinert, S. und Neale, M. (Hrsg.). Oxford Univ. Press, Melbourne 2000
Twelfth National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin 1996

Essay
Born in Kuruuldu in the Western Desert of Australia circa 1940, Pintupi artist Eunice Napanangka is now close to sixty-five - an age when many of us are seriously thinking about retirement. But right now, thoughts of winding down her activities are not uppermost on Eunice Napanangka's mind. The high level of demand for her work is keeping her extremely busy.

Napanangka lives and works at Ikunjti (Haast Bluff) in the Northern Territory, where she is at the vanguard of the very successful local art movement, led mainly by women. Over the past decade or so, Napanangka's vigorous art works, characterised by their audacious colour combinations, dramatic contours and apparent spontaneity of expression, have increasingly been garnering public recognition and critical attention.

Napanangka's deservedly soaring reputation has arisen from her signature canvases where, in accordance with Pintupi Law, she depicts the country and Tjukurrpa (Dreamings) inherited from her father, the late Tutuma Tjapangarti. Tjapangarti himself was a Pintupi artist of considerable acclaim, whose involvement in the original group of Papunya artists who began painting in the early 1970s has guaranteed him a place in the annals of Australian art history.

Eunice Napanangka, who has strong western Warlpiri connections on her mother's side, only began painting with acrylics on canvas in 1993, when the Ikuntji Women's Centre first opened, although as a small child she began learning Tjukurrpa-related body painting from her grandmother.

Since 1993 Napanangka has been exhibiting her work extensively in Australia and overseas, in both solo and group exhibitions. In addition, her work is now represented in numerous public and private collections at home and abroad.

Using pastel tones on some occasions, and at other times making use of bold, explosive primary colours, Eunice Napanangka visually 'translates' the ceremonial hairstring and tali (stippled sandhills) of her father's country and of her own childhood into often-surprising optical sequences and visual expressions of motion.

Some of Napanangka's works, with their orchestrated pulsating patterns, voluptuous curves and unrestrained palette, bear a superficialresemblance to the fractal imagery and rhythmic abstractions that are associated with the cellular, vegetal dynamics of the psychedelic six

ties. But Eunice Napanangka is no ageing flower child of the hippie movement, despite the fact that she creates compositions of seemingly cosmic energy!

Rather, it is Napanangka's interior eye, focused firmly on the foundational Pintupi concept of Tjukurrpa ('The Dreaming') that generates and impels her vibrant imagery, coupled with an imaginative dimension that has been inspired by her father's country (which, by inheritance, is therefore also her country). In terms of understanding the vision underlying Napanangka's painting, the notion of 'country' that incorporates her (extended) family relationships, so important to Napanangka, constitutes her artistic 'bottom line', despite any chance similarities with certain kinds of western abstraction, that can sometimes produce analogous visual results.

On the other hand, it needs to be recognised that Napanangka shares certain painterly characteristics with many successful contemporary 'western' artists. Recognising the intrinsic value of colour and its liberating effects, for example, Napanangka does not eschew hot pinks and gentle mauves, cornflower yellows, wild blues or sensual aquamarine colours. Napanangka's serious, committed approach to her artwork, including a willingness to innovate with form and colour, is ultimately a reflection of the open and amenable person she is. "Don't fence me in!" this artist seems to be loudly proclaiming via her artistic choices and the high-key visual language of her paintings.

It is to the credit of the art coordinators at Ikuntji that, unlike many in their position elsewhere in Aboriginal Australia, they have actively encouraged artist-driven innovation. In particular Wiko Djwan, the Arts Development Officer at Ikuntji, has encouraged the Ikuntji artists, including Eunice Napanangka, to develop a strong sense of their own professionalism as contemporary artists, and to push the artistic boundaries.

So what makes Eunice Napanangka's compositions 'work' so well? One could point to Napanangka's ability to reproduce dynamic motional sequences that lead the viewer's eye in continuous motion around her canvases, as if restlessly scanning, roving or dancing through 'country', her deployment of undulating waves or sensuous bands or blocs of interlocking colours, as well as the agreeably assymetrical nature of her works, which, in the end, is what separates true "art" from bloodless "design".

But above all Eunice Napanangka brings an energy flow and a generosity of spirit to her work, springing from her own grounded-ness and a marvellous sense of joie de vivre.

 - Christine Nicholls, Professor of Australian Studies, University of Tokyo