Silk scarf – Unkunya by Naata Nungarrayi

Features:

• 100% silk
• Artist and story information card
• Beautifully presented in gift box
• Royalties paid to the artist/family on every sale

Artist: Naata Nungarrayi

Art Centre: Ninuku Arts
Community: Kintore, Northern Territory
Language: Pintubi

Naata Nungurrayi was born at the site of Kumil, west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia, circa 1932. Naata was a young, widowed mother when she first encountered the NT Welfare Patrol in 1963, accompanying them to Papunya to live the following year. She later moved from Papunya to Docker River before settling in Kintore following the homelands movement.

Naata began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1996.

Naata’s untitled painting depicts designs associated with the soakage water site of Unkunya, west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia. The associated Tjukurrpa (Dreaming Story) tells of two snakes that passed through this site after travelling far from the east. The twin soakages that define this site were formed by the snakes as they disappeared underground. During mythological times, a group of ancestral women travelling from the west passed through Unkunya on their way to Marrapinti. The women stopped at Marrapinti to make ceremonial nose bones, also known as marrapinti, which were traditionally worn through the septum. The women continued their travels to the east, passing through Ngaminya and Wirrulnga, collecting kampurarrpa (desert raisins) from the small shrub Solanum centrale along the way.

Naata’s blazing palette and dynamic line-work breathe life into the journey of the two snakes as they shape the site of Unkunya. The artist’s repetitive use of parallel lines conjures both the travels of the women and the shapes of marrapinti they created along their way.

Provenance:

Manufactured by One of Twelve – an Australian company that showcases the work of emerging and established artists from the Asia Pacific region. We are dedicated to celebrating and contributing to the art sector of this region through the production of high quality, silk garments that depict collaborating artists work.