Puuni Brown Nungarrayi
Artist Puuni Brown Nungarrayi is redefining Papunya art according to her own visual language, forging a career that continues the legacy of Indigenous female artists from her community, who have been integral to the movement’s evolution.
Image credit: Puuni Brown Nungarrayi, Kapi Tjukurrp 4, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 91 x 91 cm. Courtesy the artist and COMA
“My mum paints that story, about Water Dreaming,” says Luitja artist Puuni Brown Nungarrayi, who lives and works in Papunya. This site and community in Central Australia (about 260 kilometres northwest of Mparntwe/Alice Springs) was the birthplace of contemporary Aboriginal art in the 1970s, one of the most significant art movements in Australian history with an internationally-renowned legacy spanning artists from generations past and present. Today, Papunya art continues to evolve according to its distinct style and visual identity via the work of emerging and new-generation artists such as Puuni Brown Nungarrayi.
Growing up, Nungarrayi would spend hours observing her mother, Western Desert artist Isobel Gorey Nampitjinpa, painting at Papunya Tjupi Arts. Nungarrayi was raised in this community, where artmaking has always been an innate expression of culture and connection to Country. It is a means of preserving and passing on ancestral knowledge, stories and cultural law. Now herself a member of Papunya Tjupi Arts, where she has been developing her artistic style for the past ten years, Nungarrayi’s paintings reinterpret her ancestral Kapi Tjukurrpa (Water Dreaming) at the site of Wantupunyu, on her grandfather and great grandfather’s Country. This site is home to a significant waterhole that features in many ancestral narratives from the region, and serves as an enduring source of artistic inspiration for Nungarrayi.
“The circles in the middle are the sites of my great grandmother, my grandmother and my great grandfather … the circles, swirling around and around and around, are the lighting and the water moving, like a storm,” says the artist, whose paintings are evocative ... Subscribe to read this article in full