Bambatu Napangardi

Kungka Tjukurrpa, c2020 | 30h x 60w | RK649

Not framed or stretched | Acrylic on linen

Bambatu Napangardi was born in around 1940 in Winron, Pintupi country, across the Western Australian border, east of Kiwirrkura. She grew up in the bush living a traditional life with her family, hunting and living off the land, as did her ancestors since the dreamtime began.

While visiting relatives in Balgo, she met her future husband, Dinni Campbell Tjampitjinpa. They were married in Balgo and had six children. Sadly, Dinni passed away in Alice Springs in 2000.

Bambatu started painting her own dreamtime stories passed on to her by her Mother, Father and her famous husband. The skills and techniques she learnt from her husband and by watching the old men paint is now applied to her own paintings, her works are quite typical of the old men and women from Kintore and Papunya.

This painting depicts the paths travelled by ancestral ceremonial women, as they moved between the waterholes of Wirrulunga, Central Australia to the Papunya region. Her "Kungka Tjukurrpa" paintings depict the journey paths travelled at each location; the women would stop, dance and sing the cycle of each sacred site. The concentric circles represent waterholes, and the parallel dotted lines represent the path travelled.