Daisy Jugadai Napaltjarri
Encyclopedia
Daisy Jugadai Napaltjarri (c. 1955–2008) was a Pintupi
- and Luritja
-speaking Indigenous artist
from Australia's
Western Desert
region, and sister of artist Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri
. Daisy Jugadai lived and painted at Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory
, where she played a significant role in the establishment of Ikuntji Women's Centre, where many artists of the region have painted.
Jugadai's works were selected for exhibition at the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
s five times between 1993 and 2001, and she was a section winner in 2000. Her paintings are held in major collections including the National Gallery of Victoria
, National Gallery of Australia
and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
.
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Daisy Jugadai was born circa 1955 at Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory
, daughter of artists Narputta Nangala and Timmy Jugadai Tjungurrayi. The ambiguity around the year of birth is in part because Indigenous Australians operate using a different conception of time, often estimating dates through comparisons with the occurrence of other events.
'Napaljarri
' (in Warlpiri) or 'Napaltjarri' (in Western Desert dialects) is a skin name
, one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners and may be associated with particular totems. Although they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans. Thus 'Daisy Jugadai' is the element of the artist's name that is specifically hers.
Jugadai's childhood was spent at both Haasts Bluff and a nearby camp, Five Mile, while she was schooled at Papunya. She married Kelly Multa, and they had a daughter Agnes. They lived on an outstation, Kungkayunti, but Daisy moved back to Haasts Bluff when Kelly died. It was not until the 1990s that she was remarried, to an Elcho Island
er, after which she travelled regularly between Arnhem Land and Haasts Bluff. Jugadai died in 2008, her funeral held at Haasts Bluff, where she was born. Daisy Jugadai had an older sister, artist Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri
, and another sister, Ester, who predeceased her.
. This initiative, which used acrylic paints to create designs representing body painting and ground sculptures, rapidly spread across Indigenous communities of central Australia, particularly following the commencement of a government-sanctioned art program in central Australia in 1983. By the 1980s and 1990s, such work was being exhibited internationally. The first artists, including all of the founders of the Papunya Tula
artists' company, had been men, and there was resistance amongst the Pintupi men of central Australia to women painting. However, there was also a desire amongst many of the women to participate, and in the 1990s large numbers of them began to create paintings. In the western desert communities such as Kintore, Yuendumu, Balgo, and on the outstations
, people were beginning to create art works expressly for exhibition and sale.
Daisy Jugadai learned to draw during her schooling at Papunya and Haasts Bluff. From the Pintupi/Luritja language group, Daisy Jugadai was one of a range of artists who came to painting through the Ikuntji Women's Centre in the early 1990s. She is credited with a significant role in the centre's establishment. She began with screen-printing and linocut printmaking, but quickly shifted to acrylic painting, producing many of her best works during the mid 1990s. Western Desert artists such as Daisy Jugadai will frequently paint particular 'dreamings
', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights. In Jugadai's case, these include honey ant
, spinifex
and emu dreamings.
in Alice Springs, and well as other major exhibitions such as the Australian Heritage Art Awards in Canberra in 1994. Recognition came in form of an award of a Northern Territory Women's Fellowship in 1993. She was one of a group of artists whose work was selected for an exhibition that toured regional Australian public galleries in 1999–2000, Ikuntji tjuta – touring, which was curated by Marina Strocchi, the art centre coordinator who had first helped develop the Ikuntji centre in Haasts Bluff some years earlier.
Works by Daisy Jugadai are held by the National Gallery of Victoria
, National Gallery of Australia
and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
. They are also held in major private collections, such as Nangara (also known as the Ebes Collection). A finalist in the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
s on several occasions, she was a section winner in 2000. Her work is also featured alongside other Indigenous artists such as Gloria Petyarre
in the Melbourne international airport terminal, completed in 1996. Antiti, near Five Mile, a 1998 painting, has appeared as cover art on an issue of the Medical Journal of Australia.
, a group of Indigenous artists including Albert Namatjira
who began painting at Hermannsburg Mission in the 1930s, as an influence on her work. Her works reflect her Tjuukurrpa
, the complex spiritual knowledge and relationships between her and her landscape; she also portrayed those of her late husband and late father. Her painting reflects fine observation of the complex structures of the vegetation and environment, its features "obsessively detailed", with the artist "devotedly [including] all the bush tucker
of that area", as well as choosing "a time of year in which to depict her country". Vegetation would be carefully painted with a trimmed brush, while even finer detail, such as pollen, would be painted using a matchstick. Despite this devotion to detail, Daisy preferred to paint large canvasses.
Artist Mandy Martin, who participated in a 2005 collaboration with several painters from the Haasts Bluff region, thought that Daisy's rendering of bush tucker was achieved with a "stylised but dazzling personal language". Writer and critic Morag Fraser described Daisy's work as "extraordinary", observing that in Daisy's paintings "nature is so wholly internalised, and its rendering so uninhibited."
Pintupi language
Pintupi is an indigenous Australian language. It is one of the Wati languages of the large Southwest branch of the Pama–Nyungan family. It is one of the varieties of the Western Desert Language ....
- and Luritja
Luritja
Luritja is a name used to refer to several dialects of the Indigenous Australian Western Desert Language, and thereby also to the people who speak these varieties, and their traditional lands.-Origin and meaning of Luritja:...
-speaking Indigenous artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
from Australia's
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
Western Desert
Western Desert cultural bloc
The Western Desert cultural bloc or just Western Desert is a cultural region in Australia covering about 600,000 square kilometres, including the Gibson Desert, the Great Victoria Desert, the Great Sandy and Little Sandy Deserts in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia...
region, and sister of artist Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri
Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri
Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri is a Pintupi– and Luritja–speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. Her paintings are held in major collections including the National Gallery of Australia.-Life:...
. Daisy Jugadai lived and painted at Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory
Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory
Haasts Bluff, also known as Ikuntji, is an Indigenous Australian community in Central Australia, a region of the Northern Territory. The community is located in the MacDonnell Shire local government area, west of Alice Springs...
, where she played a significant role in the establishment of Ikuntji Women's Centre, where many artists of the region have painted.
Jugadai's works were selected for exhibition at the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
The National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award is one of the most prestigious art awards in Australia. Established in 1984 by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, and awarded annually, it is sponsored by Telstra, so is commonly known as the Telstra Award.Prize-winners...
s five times between 1993 and 2001, and she was a section winner in 2000. Her paintings are held in major collections including the National Gallery of Victoria
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
, National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory is the main museum in the Northern Territory. The museum is located in the inner Darwin suburb of Fannie Bay...
.
Life
Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory
Haasts Bluff, also known as Ikuntji, is an Indigenous Australian community in Central Australia, a region of the Northern Territory. The community is located in the MacDonnell Shire local government area, west of Alice Springs...
, daughter of artists Narputta Nangala and Timmy Jugadai Tjungurrayi. The ambiguity around the year of birth is in part because Indigenous Australians operate using a different conception of time, often estimating dates through comparisons with the occurrence of other events.
'Napaljarri
Napaljarri (skin name)
Napaljarri or Napaltjarri is one of sixteen skin names used amongst Indigenous Australian people of Australia's Western Desert, including the Pintupi and Warlpiri. It is one of the eight female skin names...
' (in Warlpiri) or 'Napaltjarri' (in Western Desert dialects) is a skin name
Australian Aboriginal kinship
Australian Aboriginal kinship is the system of law governing social interaction, particularly marriage, in traditional Australian Aboriginal culture...
, one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners and may be associated with particular totems. Although they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans. Thus 'Daisy Jugadai' is the element of the artist's name that is specifically hers.
Jugadai's childhood was spent at both Haasts Bluff and a nearby camp, Five Mile, while she was schooled at Papunya. She married Kelly Multa, and they had a daughter Agnes. They lived on an outstation, Kungkayunti, but Daisy moved back to Haasts Bluff when Kelly died. It was not until the 1990s that she was remarried, to an Elcho Island
Elcho Island
Elcho Island is an island off the coast of Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. It is located at the southern end of the Wessel Islands group located in the East Arnhem Region. The island's largest community is the settlement of Galiwin'ku....
er, after which she travelled regularly between Arnhem Land and Haasts Bluff. Jugadai died in 2008, her funeral held at Haasts Bluff, where she was born. Daisy Jugadai had an older sister, artist Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri
Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri
Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri is a Pintupi– and Luritja–speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. Her paintings are held in major collections including the National Gallery of Australia.-Life:...
, and another sister, Ester, who predeceased her.
Background
Contemporary Indigenous art of the western desert began when Indigenous men at Papunya began painting in 1971, assisted by teacher Geoffrey BardonGeoffrey Bardon
Geoffrey Robert Bardon AM 1940, Sydney – 6 May 2003) was an Australian school teacher who was instrumental in creating the Aboriginal art of the Western Desert movement, and in bringing Australian indigenous art to the attention of the world....
. This initiative, which used acrylic paints to create designs representing body painting and ground sculptures, rapidly spread across Indigenous communities of central Australia, particularly following the commencement of a government-sanctioned art program in central Australia in 1983. By the 1980s and 1990s, such work was being exhibited internationally. The first artists, including all of the founders of the Papunya Tula
Papunya Tula
Papunya Tula, or Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, is an artist cooperative formed in 1972 that is owned and operated by Aboriginal people from the Western Desert of Australia. The group is known for its innovative work with the Western Desert Art Movement, popularly referred to as "dot painting"...
artists' company, had been men, and there was resistance amongst the Pintupi men of central Australia to women painting. However, there was also a desire amongst many of the women to participate, and in the 1990s large numbers of them began to create paintings. In the western desert communities such as Kintore, Yuendumu, Balgo, and on the outstations
Outstation movement
The Outstation movement refers to the relocation of Indigenous Australians from towns to remote outposts on traditional tribal land.As described in the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody a range of problems faced Aboriginal people living in towns.During the 1980s a number of groups...
, people were beginning to create art works expressly for exhibition and sale.
Daisy Jugadai learned to draw during her schooling at Papunya and Haasts Bluff. From the Pintupi/Luritja language group, Daisy Jugadai was one of a range of artists who came to painting through the Ikuntji Women's Centre in the early 1990s. She is credited with a significant role in the centre's establishment. She began with screen-printing and linocut printmaking, but quickly shifted to acrylic painting, producing many of her best works during the mid 1990s. Western Desert artists such as Daisy Jugadai will frequently paint particular 'dreamings
Dreaming (spirituality)
The Dreaming is a common term within the animist creation narrative of indigenous Australians for a personal, or group, creation and for what may be understood as the "timeless time" of formative creation and perpetual creating....
', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights. In Jugadai's case, these include honey ant
Honeypot ant
Honeypot ants, also called honey ants or repletes, are ants which are gorged with food by workers, to the point that their abdomens swell enormously, a condition called plerergate. Other ants then extract nourishment from them. They function essentially as living larders. Honeypot ants belong to...
, spinifex
Triodia (plant genus)
Triodia is a large genus of hummock-forming grass endemic to Australia; they are commonly known as spinifex, although they are not a part of the coastal genus Spinifex. There are currently 64 recognised species...
and emu dreamings.
Career
Throughout the 1990s, Daisy Jugadai was a regular exhibitor at the Araluen Art CentreAraluen Centre for Arts and Entertainment
The Araluen Centre for Arts & Entertainment in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory, Australia, is a cultural centre incorporating museums and a theatre....
in Alice Springs, and well as other major exhibitions such as the Australian Heritage Art Awards in Canberra in 1994. Recognition came in form of an award of a Northern Territory Women's Fellowship in 1993. She was one of a group of artists whose work was selected for an exhibition that toured regional Australian public galleries in 1999–2000, Ikuntji tjuta – touring, which was curated by Marina Strocchi, the art centre coordinator who had first helped develop the Ikuntji centre in Haasts Bluff some years earlier.
Works by Daisy Jugadai are held by the National Gallery of Victoria
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
, National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory is the main museum in the Northern Territory. The museum is located in the inner Darwin suburb of Fannie Bay...
. They are also held in major private collections, such as Nangara (also known as the Ebes Collection). A finalist in the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
The National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award is one of the most prestigious art awards in Australia. Established in 1984 by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, and awarded annually, it is sponsored by Telstra, so is commonly known as the Telstra Award.Prize-winners...
s on several occasions, she was a section winner in 2000. Her work is also featured alongside other Indigenous artists such as Gloria Petyarre
Gloria Petyarre
Gloria Petyarre is an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Anmatyerre community, just north of Alice Springs...
in the Melbourne international airport terminal, completed in 1996. Antiti, near Five Mile, a 1998 painting, has appeared as cover art on an issue of the Medical Journal of Australia.
Style
Alone amongst the Ikuntji artists, Daisy Jugadai worked at an easel. She cited the Hermannsburg SchoolHermannsburg School
The Hermannsburg School is an art movement, or art style, which began at the Hermannsburg Mission in the 1930s. The most well known artist of the style is Albert Namatjira...
, a group of Indigenous artists including Albert Namatjira
Albert Namatjira
Albert Namatjira , born Elea Namatjira, was an Australian artist. He was a Western Arrernte man, an Indigenous Australian of the Western MacDonnell Ranges area...
who began painting at Hermannsburg Mission in the 1930s, as an influence on her work. Her works reflect her Tjuukurrpa
Dreaming (spirituality)
The Dreaming is a common term within the animist creation narrative of indigenous Australians for a personal, or group, creation and for what may be understood as the "timeless time" of formative creation and perpetual creating....
, the complex spiritual knowledge and relationships between her and her landscape; she also portrayed those of her late husband and late father. Her painting reflects fine observation of the complex structures of the vegetation and environment, its features "obsessively detailed", with the artist "devotedly [including] all the bush tucker
Bushfood
Bushfood traditionally relates to any food native to Australia and used as sustenance by the original inhabitants, the Australian Aborigines, but it is a reference to any native fauna/flora that is used for culinary and/or medicinal purposes regardless of which continent or culture it originates...
of that area", as well as choosing "a time of year in which to depict her country". Vegetation would be carefully painted with a trimmed brush, while even finer detail, such as pollen, would be painted using a matchstick. Despite this devotion to detail, Daisy preferred to paint large canvasses.
Artist Mandy Martin, who participated in a 2005 collaboration with several painters from the Haasts Bluff region, thought that Daisy's rendering of bush tucker was achieved with a "stylised but dazzling personal language". Writer and critic Morag Fraser described Daisy's work as "extraordinary", observing that in Daisy's paintings "nature is so wholly internalised, and its rendering so uninhibited."
Collections
- Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern TerritoryMuseum and Art Gallery of the Northern TerritoryThe Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory is the main museum in the Northern Territory. The museum is located in the inner Darwin suburb of Fannie Bay...
- National Gallery of AustraliaNational Gallery of AustraliaThe National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
- National Gallery of VictoriaNational Gallery of VictoriaThe National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
Awards
- 1993 — exhibited, 10th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
- 1995 — finalist, 12th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
- 1998 — finalist, 15th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
- 2000 — section winner, 17th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
- 2001 — finalist, 18th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award