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Alkipi Country, 2004
Acrylic on canvas
91 x 56 cm
Chalk Horse is proud to present a selection of Linda Napurrula Ngitjanka’s works that span over six years. In 2009 Chalk Horse Director Jasper Knight travelled to the Ikuntji Community in Central Australia where he spent time with Linda and selected from over 60 works the works shown today.
Linda Ngitjanka Napurrula was born in 1935 at Warapuyu, north of Browns Bore and west of Alice Springs. Her father was born at Lake Mackay, west of Kintore in Central Australia. Her parents died when she was a little girl and she was sent to Haasts Bluff mission where she grew up and married Katapana Alan Tjapanangka. His country is Yumari, also west of Kintore.
With severe scarring from trachoma, Linda Ngitjanka has just six percent vision. However, her artistic talents, linked with her natural sense of colour and design, allow her to create vibrant, energetic works representing the mountains (puli) and bush raisins of her home country, Alkipi.
Linda Ngitjanka first painted at Ikuntji Women's Centre in 1969 and now divides her time between Haasts Bluff and Areyonga where her daughter, Tana, is principal of the school.
These works depict the landscapes and flora of the artist’s home country, Alkipi, north west of Papunya. Here the country is permeated by rockhills (Puli) filled with bush tucker growing.
The dots, interpreted by some to be illuminated city lights or microscopic anatomical compositions, represent the way the moisture gathers in the cracks of the rocks after it rains. As a result these rockhills become a good place for bush tucker to grow, such as the bush raisins and bush mushrooms (Mulpu) also depicted.
The two works titled Grevillea depict this native shrub, also a popular garden plant, growing in the shadows of the rocky hills of Alkipi. Here the honey grevillea grow profusely, providing a delicate and tasty ‘bush lolly’.
Linda’s works celebrate her home country and the variety of native foods that are available to be gathered and enjoyed there, in dynamic and highly colourful compositions which are unique to her vision of her country.