Makinti Napanangka

Makinti’s work for the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award, Women’s Dreaming at Lupulnga, stands out for its spontaneous, gestural qualities and its bursts of hot pink, bluish-mauve and yellow within masses of swirling lines whose rhythm changes and alternates within the structure of the composition. The impact of her work is haptic, concerned with touching and sensing with fingers, rather than purely visual. The repetition of colour chords and textured striations, which closely echo each other, has a rhapsodic effect akin to many bodies in dance and reveals the inner or spiritual power, the essence, of Makinti’s country and cultural identity. The energetic lines invoke body paint for women’s business, and more particularly represent spun hair-string, which is used to make belts worn by women during ceremonies associated with the rockhole site of Lupulnga, a Peewee Dreaming place. Makinti distils body-painting designs to their quintessential forms, abundant and looping in rhythm and seeming to stretch beyond the frame.

Judith Ryan
Senior Curator, Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Victoria
Excerpt from exhibition catalogue

Makinti Napanangka
Pintupi born c. 1930
Women's Dreaming at Lulpulnga, 2003
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
153.0 x 183.0cm
Courtesy of the artist and Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs