Prior to her death in 2013, Ningura Napurrula was considered among Australia's top senior Aboriginal women painters. She was married to Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi, one of the greatest of the original Pintupi painters who walked into Papunya. Her work is characterized by thick layers of acrylic paint, dramatic linear design, and powerful contrasting color fields.

Ningura Napurrula Gibson was born around 1938 at Watulka in Western Australia, south of the modern Kiwirrkura community and moved to Papunya in the early days of the settlement with her husband (now deceased). She is the widow of Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi, a highly respected Pintupi elder who held significant knowledge of his countries Dreaming stories. In 1996 she was part of a group of elderly women from Kintore and Kiwirrkura who began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in their own right.

Characteristic of her work is a strong dynamism coupled with rich, linear design, compositions created with heavy layers of acrylic paint. Thematically, in many of her paintings, Ningura depicted the mythological events of her ancestors. Her artwork focused on the travels of her female ancestors and the sacred sites they passed by on their birth journeys. Another notable theme in many of Ningura's works was the mythological significance of the bush tucker that the ancestors collected on their journeys.

Ningura's designs frequently referenced the rock hole sites of Palturunya and Wirrulnga, east of the Kiwirrkura Community (Mount Webb) in Western Australia. The concentric circles she employed represented rock holes, and the arcs represented  the higher rocky outcrops near specific sites

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In 1996 Ningura was a chief participant in the initial, and seminal, Papunya Tula Artists exhibition. Thereafter, she was featured in dozens of group shows in Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin. She had her first solo exhibition with William Mora Aboriginal Art in 2000, and participated in the impressive Kintore Women's Painting for the Papunya Tula retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Ningura became a very high profile artist sought after by galleries and collectors throughout Australia and overseas. She was one of the eight Australian artists featured at the opening of the Musee de Qaui Branly, in Paris in 2006. The prominence she received following the Paris commission sits atop a steady public esteem that was evident from the extensive number of exhibitions and collections in which her paintings have appeared during her life and afterwards, both in Australia and overseas. In the Australian art Collector (issue 39, Jan-Mar 2007), Ningura was named one of the 50 most collectible Australian artists. Before her death she was considered one of the Top 20 Australian Aboriginal Living Artists.

This massive, powerful painting by one of Australia's greatest Aboriginal women painters focuses on the travels of Ningura Naparrula's female ancestors and the sacred sites they passed in the early Dreamtime. Her dreaming includes "Wirrulnga", a rockhole site east of the Kiwirrkurra community in Western Australia where the Napaltjarri and Naparrula women go to give birth, which is forbidden to men.

"Women's Ceremony" was housed, and on display, at the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C. until its relocation to Asheville, North Carolina in 2016.

Born: c. 1938

Died: 2013

Skin Name: Napurrula

Language: Pintupi

Region: Kintore

Dreaming: Ancestral travels, Women's business

Collections

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sidney;

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra;

Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, Melbourne;

Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin;

Museum de Lyon, France;

Musee de Quay Branly, Paris, France;

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Solo Exhibitons

2000, William Mora Galleries, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Group Exhibitons

1996, Papunya Tula, Alice Spings;

1999, Utopia Art, Sidney;

2001, Telstra Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory; Pintupi, Alice Springs; Aborigena, Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, Italy;

2002, Araluen Art Centre;

2003, Glen Eira City; Mason Gallery at Japinka WA; Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; Australian Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Toskansky Place, Prague, Czech Republic; Masterpieces from the Western Desert, Gavin Gallery, London, UK;

2004, Mythology and Reality - Contemporary Aboriginal Desert Art from Gabriellle Pizzi Collection, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Peintres Pintupi, Galerie DAD, Mantes-la-Jolie, France;

2005, Panuya Tula Artists, Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; Panuya Tula Artists - new work for a new space, Utopia Art Sydney; Repetition, Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane;

2006, Panuya Tula Artists - across the board, Utopia Arts Sydney, Sydney; Oceanic Art, Galerie DAD, Paris, France;

2006 - 2007, Gifted: Contemporary Aboriginal Art: The Mollie Gowin Acquisition Fund, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney;

2007, Papunya Tula Artists 2007, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, Papunya Tula Women, Suzanne O'Connell Gallery, Brisbane; Big Paintings from Papunya Tula Artists, Utopia Art Sydney, Sydney;

2008, Papunya Tula Artists 2008, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne;

Awards:

2001 - finalist 18th Telstra NATSIAA

2002 - 32nd Alice Prize, highly commended

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Source: Whiteford Fine Art, 6 Duke Street, James's, London, www.whitfordfineart.com/pages/biography/5357.html