Size 120cm x 120cm
Acrylic on Linen

Artist Barbara Napangarti Reid

Country Tjukurla WA

About the Painting
The painting depicts women's ceremonial sites surrounding Tjukurla in the western desert of Central Australia, the traditional homeland of the Barbara.

Ceremonial sites carry a deep spiritual meaning and it is where the women narrate their sacred Aboriginal Dreamtime stories, through song lines, dance cycles and body paint.

About the Artist
Barbara Napangarti Reid is a Ngaanyatjarra woman working in a individualistic style depicting the country of Tjukurla in the Gibson Desert, Western Australia. Barbara’s paintings are beautiful depictions of place, paintings of the lands to which she is custodian and the songs that explain them. Characteristic for Barbara is the depiction of puli – rock formations, and tuli – sand hills, those features that are so much a part of the land from which she comes. Also vital to Barbara’s work is the telling of women’s scared stories – minyma – narratives that revolve around the role of the woman as healer and provider within Ngaanyatjarra society. With their beautiful lyricism and exquisite tonal palette Barbara’s paintings work to capture the viewer, mesmerising with their quiet intensity and irrepressible joy.

Barbara has been painting as early as 1987 where she first started with the Centre for Aboriginal Artists in Alice Springs. Barbara and family have now moved to Alice Springs where she paints in the studios of Gallery Gondwana.

In many of Barbara’s paintings she describes aspects of the secret and scared Tingari Cycle, a spiritual journey that incorporates story, song and ceremony. They narrate the stories of the Tingari women who travelled vast stretches of the country performing rituals, which in turn brought into being the land formations of particular sites. Her pictures often depict the Minyma Tingari – the telling of women’s ceremonial stories that relate to the natural environment surrounding Tjukurla which is dominated by expansive sandhills and rock holes containing water where bush foods are found. Barbara depicts the Tingari women – represented by the U shapes – sitting around ceremonial ground, depicted by the concentric circles. The wider U shapes are the windbreakers the women use, and around them are the features of this particular landscape, pintalypa, a native bush-apple, represented by the red-ochre oval shapes.

Exhibitions

• “Salt, Sand and Spinifex” Japingka Gallery, June 2000
• Barbara Napangarti Reid” Vivien Anderson Gallery, August 2000
• 17^th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Darwin N.T

Collections