• Art Gallery of New South Wales

• Campbelltown City Art Gallery

• Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory

• National Gallery of Australia

• National Gallery of Victoria

• Queensland Art Gallery

• Macquarie Bank collection

• Shell Aboriginal Art Fund Collection

Solo exhibitions and awards

• 2000 – Utopia Art, Sydney

• 2001 – Utopia Art, Sydney

• 2002 – Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne

• 2003 – Utopia Art, Sydney

• 1997 – 14th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award

• 1998 – 15th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award

• 1999 – 16th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award

• 2000 – 17th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award

• 2001 – finalist, 18th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award

• 2003 – finalist, Clemenger Contemporary Art Award at the National Gallery of Victoria

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

• 2008 – winner, 25th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award

• Contemporary Indigenous Australian art

RETURN TOP

RETURN TOP

Makinti Napanangka (c. 1922–1930 – January 2011) (post-mortem: Kwementyaye Napanangka) is a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous Australian artist from Australia's Western Desert region. She has lived in the communities of Haasts Bluff and Papunya, and now works at Kintore, about 50 kilometers (31 mi) north-east of the Lake MacDonald region where she was born, on the border of the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Makinti Napanangka began painting at Kintore in the mid-1990s, encouraged by a community art project. Interest in her work developed quickly, and she is now represented in most significant Australian public art galleries, including the National Gallery of Australia. A finalist in the 2003 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, Makinti won the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2008. Her work was shown in the major Indigenous art exhibition Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Working in synthetic polymer on linen or canvas, Makinti's paintings primarily take as their subjects a rock hole site, Lupul, and an Indigenous story (or "dreaming") about two sisters, known as Kungka Kutjarra. She is a member of the Papunya Tula Artists Cooperative, but her work has been described as more spontaneous than that of her fellow artists

Artistic career

Makinti Napanangka is a senior Pintupi woman, born around 1932, who has resided within the Kintore Community and now lives in Alice Springs. She was introduced to acrylic painting in 1995 as a member of the Haasts Bluff-Kintore painting project conducted at Kintore. Makinti quickly developed her style and has held to it, painting continuously since then, aside from an enforced break due to a cataract operation in 1998.

Makinti's paintings are often the stories of the Kungka Kutjarra (Two Women), Ancestor figures whose travels cover great distances from Pitjantjajara country, then north east through to and beyond Haasts Bluff and Papunya. Such journeys include numerous ceremonial sites, ceremonial activities and food gathering.

Makinti's images often comprise hairstring skirts (these skirts are woven by the women from human hair using a simple spindle made of two sticks) and belts worn by women in ceremonies, shown as sets of lines varying in hue and density, usually in bold yellows and oranges, alternating with white. These works are cheerful and free flowing, intensified at times by the addition of a stray grey-blue line, or a patch of crimson red or purple.

Makinti is not concerned with neatness, or the painstaking 'dot by dot' approach of others. Her bands of lines form into sweeping arcs, creating patterns that twist and bend. She is very different even to her Pintupi contemporaries.
Makinti Napanangka's work is highly sought after and is represented in major public and private collections.

Personal life

Makinti Napanangka was born around 1922 or 1930, at a location described by some sources as Lupul rock hole but by one major reference work as Mangarri. All sources agree that she comes from the area of Karrkurritinytja or Lake MacDonald, which straddles the border between Western Australia and the Northern Territory, 50 kilometres south-west of Kintore, and about 500 kilometers west of Alice Springs.

She is a member of the Pintupi group of Indigenous people, who are associated with the communities of Papunya, Kintore, and Kiwirrkura. "Napanangka" is a skin name, one of sixteen used to denote the subgroups in the Pintupi kinship system, not a surname in the sense used by Europeans. Thus her personal name is "Makinti". The uncertainty around Makinti's date and place of birth arises from the fact that Indigenous Australians often estimate dates of birth by comparison with other events, especially for people born before contact with European Australians. They may also cite the place of birth as being where the mother first felt the foetus move, rather than where the birth took place.

Makinti's first contact with white people was when she was living at Lupul when seeing riding camels. She was one of a large group of people who walked into Haasts Bluff in the early 1940s, together with her husband Nyukuti Tjupurrula (brother of artist Nosepeg Tjupurrula), and their son Ginger Tjakamarra, born around 1940. At Haasts Bluff they had a second child, Narrabri Narrapayi, in 1949. The population moved to Papunya in the late 1950s, where Makinti had another child, Jacqueline Daaru, in 1958. She had a daughter, Winnie Bernadette, in 1961 in Alice Springs. The family moved to Kintore when it was established in the early 1980s, and by 1996 Makinti was painting there for the Papunya Tula Artists Cooperative. Her children Ginger, Narrabri, and Jacqueline also became artists, all of them painting for Papunya Tula Artists. Physically tiny yet robust and strong, Makinti was described as "a charmer and an irascible character", with an infectious smile.

Makinti Napanangka died in Alice Springs on Sunday 9 January 2011 and after death she is referred to as Kwementyaye Napanangka; it is customary amongst some Indigenous communities not to refer to the deceased by their given name for some time after their death.

MN800

Makinti Napanangka  (1922-2011)

synthetic polymer on linen

     Email

RETURN TOP

MN800 work in progress

Makinti Napanangka  (1922-2011)

synthetic polymer on linen
 
Image Size: 202 x 212 cm

Makinti Napanangka  (1922-2011)

synthetic polymer on linen

122 x 182 cm