Lot 59: - Jukuna Mona Chuguna, Ngarta Jinny Bent born circa 1933, circa 1935-2002 WAYAMPAJARTI AREA synthetic polymer paint on canvas

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

220 by 508cm

Biennale de Lyon, France, in 2000
18th NATSIAA Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, August, 2001
Wayampajarti Area, Jukuna Mona Chuguna and Ngarta Jinny Bent, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne, 23 August - 13 September, 2002
Porta Oberta al Dreamtime: Art Aborigen Contemporani d'Austràlia, 1971–2003, Fundació Caixa de Girona, Girona, Spain, 24 September - 14 November, 2004, and Fundació Caixa de Terrassa, Barcelona, Spain, 20 November 2004 - 9 January 2005

Pat Low and Eirlys Richards et al, Two Sisters Ngarta and Jukuna, Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2004, illus. front cover and back cover (detail).

G. Planella (ed.), Porta Oberta al Dreamtime: Art Aborigen Contemporani d'Austràlia, 1971-2003, Girona: Fundació Caixa de Girona, 2004, pp.36-37, illus.

Painted at and during the Biennale de Lyon, France in 2000 while the artists were touring with the Ngurrara Canvas
Mangkaja Arts, Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia
Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne
Private collection

Cf. This work is closely related to The Ngurrara canvas 1, in Sotheby's Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 28-29 July, 2003, lot 246 (and cover), and The Ngurrara canvas 2, 1997, in the collection of Mangkaja Arts, Fitzroy Crossing, in S. Kleinert. and M. Neal (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2000, front and back covers, and pp.496-497, illus.

The painting depicts the ten main waterholes in Walmajarri country in the Great Sandy Desert. It relates to the two Ngurrara land claim paintings produced by 60 artists from Mangkaja Arts, Fitzroy Crossing, and was painted in Lyon for and during the Biennale by the artists who are sisters.

The Ngurrara canvases were first conceived in 1996 to underpin the Ngurrara Native Title claim before the National Native Title Tribunal in 1997. These canvases continue the tradition set in the incipient land rights cases of the 1960s when the Yolngu of north east Arnhem Land produced bark paintings and ritual objects as evidence of their 'deeds of title' to their ancestrally endowed land in the face of the introduction of mineral mining. In addition, the canvases follow the custom of collaborative ground paintings for ceremony, as well as fulfilling the traditional duty of caring for one's country by painting it when one is distanced from it.

The Ngurrara claim was for some 800,000 hectares of Crown Land in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. The original inhabitants, belonging to the Walmajarri, Mangala, Juwaliny, Wankajunga and Manjilarra language groups, had been taken off their land north into the Kimberley, up until the 1970s, to make way for mining and bomb testing. While some mining exploration occurred, the area remained practically uninhabited since. A number of those who were part of the diaspora have emerged as renowned artists, most working through Mangkaja Arts.

The Ngurrara canvases were regarded as maps of country based around the depiction of 'living' fresh waterholes, called jila, the source not only of life-giving waters, but also of people's social, cultural and personal identities. The painting used in the Native Title hearings, The Ngurrara canvas 2, was intended to overcome any language difficulties: as one of the community leaders and artists, Tommy May, said: 'If Kartiya (white people) can't believe our words, they can look at our painting, it all says the same thing.'

The Walmajarri region, around Wayampajarti, covers the largest area of the Native Title claim, which proved successful in a judgement handed down in 2007. This painting is an expanded view of the sections that depict the same country in the Ngurrara canvases. It is the land where the artists walked in pre-contact times.

This painting is sold with a copy of the book Two Sisters Ngarta and Jukuna, a CD containing images of the artists executing the work, together with press releases and further images, documentation and a copy of the Wayampajarti Area exhibition invitation which features the painting on the cover.