NORA WOMPI NUNGURRAYI, Kunawarritji, 2008

NORA WOMPI NUNGURRAYI Kukatja language, 1935 - 2017 Kunawarritji, 2008 acrylic on linen 180 x 120 cm bears inscription verso: Nora Wompi, 372/08, Warlayirti Artists, 1800x1200; D'Lan Contemporary and The Lepley Collection stickers PROVENANCE Warlayirti Artists, Western Australia, Cat No.372/08 Suzanne O'Connell Gallery, Queensland The Lepley Collection, Western Australia Cat No. 0834 D'Lan Contemporary, Victoria Private Collection, Queensland EXHIBITED Reverence, 27 October – 1 December 2023, D'Lan Contemporary, Melbourne, Victoria ILLUSTRATED Reverence, D'Lan Contemporary, 2023, p.30 Nora Wompi Nungurrayi painted the Country surrounding her homelands of Kunawarritji, a site deeply connected to the Minyipuru Jukurrpa (Seven Sisters Dreaming). This important ancestral narrative follows the journey of seven sisters across the desert landscape, their travels shaping the Country and leaving enduring traces in its waterholes, landforms and sacred sites. Through her paintings, Wompi expressed her intimate knowledge of this Country, its geography and the ancestral stories embedded within it. In 1906, Kunawarritji became one of the wells along the Canning Stock Route, bringing early encounters between her family and the drovers who travelled through Martu Country. As a young woman, Wompi followed the stockmen north to Balgo Mission, where she lived for many years and began painting alongside her close friend and mentor, Eubena Nampitjin. During this period, she developed a distinctive painting style characterised by vibrant colour, rhythmic dotting and an expressive interpretation of the desert landscape. When Kunawarritji was later established as an independent community, Wompi returned to her ancestral homelands, where she continued to live and paint until her passing in 2017. Her later works reflect a renewed closeness to the Country of her birth, combining a lifetime of cultural knowledge with a highly individual visual language. Throughout her practice, painting remained a means of maintaining and sharing her connection to Country, family and the enduring traditions of the Martu people. @ NORA WOMPI NUNGURRAYI / Copyright Agency, 2026

Estimate:£2,628.21

View all items fromArt LevenorArts & Graphics