Awards and Important Commissions:

2002 - Alice Prize, highly recommended.
2001 - Finalist 18th Telstra Art Award, Australian National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Telstra Award,
2002 Australian Post - the Stamps (LEFT) $1.10 Ningura Napurrula (Pintupi),
Subjects: Travels of her female ancestors, the sites they passed and the bush tucker they collected.

ABOUT Ningura Napurrula designs
Ningura Napurrula depicts the mythological events of her ancestors. Her artworks focuses on the travels of her female ancestors, the sacred sites that they passed, and the mythological significance of the bush tucker that they collected. Ningura Napurrula designs are associated with the rock hole sites of Palturunya and Wirrulnga, east of the Kiwirrkura Community (Mount Webb) in Western Australia. The concentric circles represent rock holes and the arcs represent the higher rocky outcrops near the site. The U shapes represent women camped at the site. Ningura depicts the mythological events of her ancestors. Her artworks focuses on the travels of her female ancestors, the sacred sites that they passed, and the mythological significance of the bush tucker that they collected. In mythological times, one old woman, Kutunga Napanangka, passed through this site during her travels towards the east. She passed through numerous sites along the way before arriving at the permanent water site of Muruntji, south west of Mt. Leibig. These travels and rituals help to explain the current customs and the ceremonial lives of these Pintupi women.

Ningura Napurrula Gibson
Born:                    1938
Region:                 Western Desert
Community:           Kintore
Outstation:             Lake McKay
Language:             Pintupi
Local group:           Pintupi
Ningura Napurrula Gibson was born around 1938 at Watulka in Western Australia, south of the modern Kiwirrkura community, Ningura Napurrula moved to Papunya in the early days of the settlement with her husband (now deceased). She is the widow of Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi, a highly respected Pintupi elder who held significant knowledge of his countries Dreaming stories. In 1996 she was part of a group of elderly women from Kintore and Kiwirrkura who began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in their own right. Characteristic of her work is a strong dynamism and rich linear design-compositions created with heavy layers of acrylic paint.

Ningura Napurrula participated in an initial Papunya Tula Artists exhibition in 1996 and she has been featured in several group shows in Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin in 1999. She had her first solo exhibition with William Mora Aboriginal Art in 2000, and participated in the impressive Kintore Women's Painting for the Papunya Tula retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Bibliography:
Bardon, Geoffrey; Ryan, Judith; Pizzi, Gabrielle; Stanhope, Zara., Mythology and Reality - Contemporary Aboriginal Desert Art from the Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2004.