Wintjiya Napaltjarri
Encyclopedia
Wintjiya Napaltjarri (also spelt Wentjiya, Wintjia or Wentja), and also known as Wintjia Napaltjarri No. 1, is a Pintupi
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 ....

-speaking Indigenous artist 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. She is the sister of artist Tjunkiya Napaltjarri
Tjunkiya Napaltjarri
Tjunkiya Napaltjarri was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region...

; both were wives of Toba Tjakamarra, with whom Wintjiya had five children.

Wintjiya's involvement in contemporary Indigenous Australian art
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art is the modern art work produced by Indigenous Australians. It is generally regarded as beginning with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory in 1971, involving artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri...

 began in 1994 at Haasts Bluff
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...

, when she participated in a group painting project and in the creation of batik
Batik
Batik is a cloth that traditionally uses a manual wax-resist dyeing technique. Batik or fabrics with the traditional batik patterns are found in Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, China, Azerbaijan, India, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, and Singapore.Javanese traditional batik, especially from...

 fabrics. She has also been a printmaker, using drypoint
Drypoint
Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. Traditionally the plate was copper, but now acetate, zinc, or plexiglas are also commonly used...

 etching. Her paintings typically use an iconography
Iconography
Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...

 that represents the eggs of the flying ant (waturnuma) and hair-string skirts (nyimparra). Her palette generally involves strong red or black against a white background.

A finalist in the 2007 and 2008 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, Wintjiya's work is held in several of Australia's public collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of New South Wales
The Art Gallery of New South Wales , located in The Domain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was established in 1897 and is the most important public gallery in Sydney and the fourth largest in Australia...

, 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...

, the 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 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...

.

Life

A 2004 reference work on Western Desert painters suggests Wintjiya was born in about 1923; the Art Gallery of New South Wales suggests 1932; expert Vivien Johnson reports two possible years: 1932 or 1934. The ambiguity around the year of birth is in part because Indigenous Australians have a different conception of time, often estimating dates by 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
Warlpiri language
The Warlpiri language is spoken by about 3000 of the Warlpiri people in Australia's Northern Territory. It is one of the Ngarrkic languages of the large Southwest branch of the Pama–Nyungan family, and is one of the largest aboriginal languages in Australia in terms of number of speakers.-...

) 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 often used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans. Thus Wintjiya is the element of the artist's name that is specifically hers. She is sometimes referred to as Wintjia Napaltjarri No. 1; there is another artist from the same region, Wintjiya Morgan Napaljarri (also called Wintjiya Reid Napaltjarri), who is known as Wintjiya No. 2.

Wintjiya came from an area north-west or north-east of Walungurru (the Pintupi-language
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 ....

 name for Kintore, Northern Territory
Kintore, Northern Territory
Kintore is a remote settlement in the Northern Territory of Australia, located approximately 530 km west of Alice Springs and close to the border with Western Australia. At the 2001 census, Kintore had a population of 691, of which 95% identified themselves as Aboriginal...

). Johnson reports that Wintjiya was born at Mulparingya, "a swamp and spring to the northeast of Kintore", west of Alice Springs
Alice Springs, Northern Territory
Alice Springs is the second largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Popularly known as "the Alice" or simply "Alice", Alice Springs is situated in the geographic centre of Australia near the southern border of the Northern Territory...

. As was the case for a number of artists from the region, Wintjiya's family walked in to the Haasts Bluff
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...

 settlement in the 1950s, moving to Papunya
Papunya, Northern Territory
Papunya is a small Indigenous Australian community of about 299 people roughly 240 km northwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, Australia...

 in the 1960s. In 1981, Kintore was established and the family moved there. Her native language is Pintupi, and she speaks almost no English. She is the sister of artist Tjunkiya Napaltjarri
Tjunkiya Napaltjarri
Tjunkiya Napaltjarri was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region...

, and both are widows of Toba Tjakamarra, father of one of the prominent 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"...

 art movement, Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula
Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula
Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region...

. Wintjiya and Toba had five children: sons Bundy (born 1953) and Lindsay (born 1961 and now deceased); and daughters Rubilee (born 1955), Claire (born 1958) and Eileen (born 1960). Superficially frail by 2008, she nevertheless had the stamina and agility to teach her granddaughter the skills of chasing and capturing goanna
Goanna
Goanna is the name used to refer to any number of Australian monitor lizards of the genus Varanus, as well as to certain species from Southeast Asia.There are around 30 species of goanna, 25 of which are found in Australia...

s.

Background

Contemporary Indigenous art of the western desert began in 1971 when Indigenous men at Papunya created murals and canvases using western art materials, assisted by teacher Geoffrey Bardon
Geoffrey 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....

. Their work, which used acrylic paints to create designs representing body painting and ground sculptures, rapidly spread across Indigenous communities of central Australia, particularly after the introduction of a government-sanctioned art program in central Australia in 1983. By the 1980s and '90s, 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, were men, and there was resistance among the Pintupi men of central Australia to women also painting. However, many of the women wished to participate, and in the 1990s many of them began to paint. In the western desert communities such as Kintore, Yuendumu, Balgo
Balgo, Western Australia
Balgo is a small Aboriginal Community in Western Australia which is linked with both the Great Sandy Desert and the Tanami Desert. The Community is in the Shire of Halls Creek, off the Tanami Road . It has a petrol station, supermarket, Catholic Parish, School Adult Education Centre, Clinic and...

, 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.

Career

Since the 1970s Wintjiya had created artefacts such as ininti
Erythrina vespertilio
Erythrina vespertilio is a tree native to north and north-east Australia. Its common names are Grey Corkwood, Bat's Wing Coral Tree, and the more ambiguous "bean tree". In the Western Desert language it is also known as ininti....

seed necklaces, mats and baskets, using traditional artistic techniques including weaving of 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...

 grass. When the women of Kintore, including sisters Wintjiya and Tjunkiya, started creating canvasses, their works bore little resemblance to those of their male peers (who had been painting for some years). Wintjiya's first efforts were collaborative, as one of a group of women who created murals on the Kintore Women's Centre walls in 1992. She then joined a painting camp with other women from Kintore and Haasts Bluff to produce "a series of very large collaborative canvases of the group's shared 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....

" (dreamings are stories used to pass "important knowledge, cultural values and belief systems" from generation to generation). Twenty-five women were involved in planning the works, which included three canvases that were 3 metres (9.8 ft) square, as well as two that were 3 by; Tjunkiya and Wintjiya performed a ceremonial dance as part of the preparations. Wintjiya and her sister were determined to participate in the project despite cataract
Cataract
A cataract is a clouding that develops in the crystalline lens of the eye or in its envelope, varying in degree from slight to complete opacity and obstructing the passage of light...

s interfering with their vision. As was the case for Makinti Napanangka
Makinti Napanangka
Makinti Napanangka was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous Australian artist from Australia's Western Desert region...

, an operation to remove cataracts resulted in a new brightness to Wintjiya's compositions. Sources differ on when Wintjiya and her sister Tjunkiya had their cataracts removed: Johnson suggests 1999, but art centre coordinator Marina Strocchi, who worked closely with the women, states that it was 1994. In the early 2000s Wintjiya and her sister painted at Kintore, but in 2008 they were working from their home: "the widows' camp ouside her 'son' Turkey Tolson's former residence".

Tjunkiya and her sister Wintjiya did not confine their activities to painting canvases. In 2001 the National Gallery of Victoria purchased a collaborative batik
Batik
Batik is a cloth that traditionally uses a manual wax-resist dyeing technique. Batik or fabrics with the traditional batik patterns are found in Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, China, Azerbaijan, India, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, and Singapore.Javanese traditional batik, especially from...

, created by the sisters in cooperation with several other artists, together with one completed by Wintjiya alone. These works were the product of a batik workshop run for the women of Haasts Bluff by Northern Territory Education Department
Government of the Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is governed according to the principles of the Westminster system, a form of parliamentary government based on the model of the United Kingdom...

 staff Jill Squires and Therese Honan in the months following June 1994. The works, including several by Wintjiya, were not completed until 1995. Circular markings, used by Wintjiya in both these batiks and her subsequent paintings, represent the eggs of the flying ant (waturnuma), one of the main subjects of her art. She also portrays "tree-like organic motifs" and representations of hair-string skirts (nyimparra). The sisters also gained experience with drypoint
Drypoint
Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. Traditionally the plate was copper, but now acetate, zinc, or plexiglas are also commonly used...

 etching; works produced by Wintjiya in 2004 – Watiyawanu and Nyimpara – are held by the 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 :...

.

Wintjiya's work was included in a survey of the history of Papunya Tula painting hosted by Flinders University
Flinders University
Flinders University, , is a public university in Adelaide, South Australia. Founded in 1966, it was named in honour of navigator Matthew Flinders, who explored and surveyed the South Australian coastline in the early 19th century.The university has established a reputation as a leading research...

 in the late 1990s. Reviewing the exhibition, Christine Nicholls remarked of Wintjiya's Watanuma that it was a germinal painting, with fine use of muted colour, and showed sensitivity to the relationships between objects and spaces represented in the work. Likewise, Marina Strocchi has noted the contrast between some of the subtle colours used in batik and Wintjiya's characteristic painting palette, which is "almost exclusively stark white with black or red". Hetti Perkins and Margie West have suggested that in paintings by Kintore women artists such as Wintjiya and Tjunkiya, "the viscosity of the painting's surface seems to mimic the generous application of body paint in women's ceremonies".

Wintjiya's painting Rock holes west of Kintore was a finalist in the 2007 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...

. Another of her works, Country west of Kintore, was accepted as a finalist in 2008. Works by Wintjiya have appeared in many significant exhibitions including: Papunya Women group exhibition (Utopia Art Gallery, Sydney, 1996); Raiki Wara: Long Cloth from Aboriginal Australia and the Torres Strait (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...

 1998–99); Twenty-five Years and Beyond: Papunya Tula Painting (Flinders University
Flinders University
Flinders University, , is a public university in Adelaide, South Australia. Founded in 1966, it was named in honour of navigator Matthew Flinders, who explored and surveyed the South Australian coastline in the early 19th century.The university has established a reputation as a leading research...

 Art Museum, 1999); Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius (Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of New South Wales
The Art Gallery of New South Wales , located in The Domain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was established in 1897 and is the most important public gallery in Sydney and the fourth largest in Australia...

, 2000) and Land Marks (National Gallery of Victoria, 2006). Her first solo exhibition was at Wolloongabba Art Gallery in Brisbane in 2005, while in 2010 there was one at a Melbourne gallery. Also in 2010, a print by Wintjiya was selected for inclusion in the annual Fremantle Arts Centre
Fremantle Arts Centre
Fremantle Arts Centre is a multi-arts organisation, offering a program of exhibitions, residencies, art courses and music in a historic building in the heart of Fremantle, Western Australia....

's Print Award.

Works by Wintjiya are held in major private collections such as Nangara (also known as the Ebes Collection). Her work has been acquired by several major public art institutions including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 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...

, and the National Gallery of Victoria. Internationally, her work is held in the Aboriginal Art Museum at Utrecht
Utrecht (city)
Utrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands with a population of 312,634 on 1 Jan 2011.Utrecht's ancient city centre features...

 in the Netherlands. Works by Wintjiya and her sister Tjunkiya are traded in the auction market, fetching prices of a few thousand dollars.

Collections

  • Aboriginal Art Museum, The Netherlands
  • Art Gallery of New South Wales
    Art Gallery of New South Wales
    The Art Gallery of New South Wales , located in The Domain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was established in 1897 and is the most important public gallery in Sydney and the fourth largest in Australia...

  • Artbank
    Artbank
    Artbank is an art rental program established in 1980 by the Australian Government. It supports contemporary Australian artists and encourages a wider appreciation of their work by buying artworks which it then rents to public and private sector clients. It was modeled on the Canadian Art Bank,...

  • 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...

  • 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 :...

  • 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...

  • Supreme Court of the Northern Territory
    Supreme Court of the Northern Territory
    The Supreme Court of the Northern Territory is the superior court for the Australian Territory of the Northern Territory. It has unlimited jurisdiction within the territory in civil matters, and hears the most serious criminal matters...


Awards

  • 2007 – finalist, 24th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award
  • 2008 – finalist, 25th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award

External links

  • Portraits of several Indigenous artists, including Wintjiya Napaltjarri, by prominent portrait photographer Greg Weight
    Greg Weight
    Greg Weight is an Australian photographer specialising in fine art photography and portraiture. Greg was the inaugural winner of the Australian Photographic Portrait Prize in 2003 and his book Australian Artists, portraits by Greg Weight was published by Chapter and Verse in 2004...

    .
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