NGUPULYA PUMANI
1948 - 2019
Ngupulya Pumani, also known as Margaret Pumani, was an Australian Aboriginal artist from South Australia, born in 1948 at Mimili, in the north-west of the state. She belonged to the Yankunytjatjara community and came from a distinguished family of artists. Her mother, Milatjari, and her sister, Betty Kuntiwa, are both celebrated painters.
A senior Pitjantjatjara woman, Ngupulya was deeply committed to fostering traditional law and culture. She began painting in 2009, working through Mimili's community art co-operative, Mimili Maku, having been inspired to take up the brush by her mother. Her works are imbued with the cultural knowledge and artistic skill that come from a lifetime of learning.
Her debut major exhibition was later that year in Alice Springs, at the annual Desert Mob show. From there, her paintings were exhibited in several cities around Australia, including twice at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne. Her works are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Artwork
Strongly anchored to country and the stories it holds, Ngupulya wove the narratives of her country across her canvas. Her paintings portray a truth, a unique rawness, but also a joy of culture and tradition.
She painted with rhythmic over-dotting, using a soft palette of restricted colours to create a landscape with layers and flowing lines. Pale, earthy tones in her backgrounds evoke the desert landscape, and these are contrasted with patterns of intense, bright dots and lines to represent symbols, figures and their journeys. Many of her techniques were drawn from her mother, but applied more consistently with her own refinements. The results have been compared to the early works of Emily Kngwarreye.
The Witchetty Grub Songline
The Witchetty Grub Songline is a significant story from the Mimili area, The maku (witchetty grub) is found in the roots of the Acacia Kempeana. This was the central subject of Ngupulya's practice.
Her mother's ngura (homeland) is Antara, a sacred place associated with the Maku Tjukurpa (Dreaming), and Ngupulya most often painted stories from this Dreaming.
The Witchetty Grub Songline tells the story of how Aboriginal women went to the waterhole on top of the rocks at Antara to clean out the rock hole and wait for the rains to come. When they arrived and the waterhole was full, they would tap the water's surface with a stick, then sing and dance to celebrate. They would dig under the maku (witchetty bush) and find maku tjuta, enough maku for everyone.
In her celebrated work Maku inmaku pakani (2012), Pumani depicts this tjukurpa at Antara, a site dominated by two rock holes that women care for and celebrate in song and dance when filled with rainwater. Also important at the site are the plentiful maku, which are dug up from beneath the witchetty bush and roasted on coals. The red granite boulders that distinguish this landscape are depicted beneath a complex and celebratory field of dots.
