22024004918

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Eunice Napanangka Jack, Kuruyultu (green blend on natural, tencel linen), flared skirt.

This design by Eunice Napanangka Jack depicts her father’s Tjukurrpa (Dreaming). It shows the country at Kuruyultu, near Tjukurrla in Western Australia.

Eunice Napanangka Jack says about the artwork:

‘This is my country. I can’t remember how it all happened, because it happened before I was born. I have a scar on my back from it. My grandfather speared a wallaby at Kuruyultu. That night he ate that wallaby. At the same time my mother could feel me moving inside her. She was heavily pregnant with me. That next morning, after my grandfather had speared the wallaby, killed it and eaten it, I was born. I was born at Kuruyultu, near the rockhole there. I can’t remember my grandfather or my grandmother. I was still a little baby. We left that place, Kuruyultu. My father, my mother, my big sister and my father’s brother, we all left together and went to Haasts Bluff. I grew up in Haasts Bluff. I have been back to Kuruyultu for visits but I never lived there again in my country. I think about it every day. Only my father knows all the stories for that country and he painted them too… all the men’s stories. I know the story of the wallaby mother and daughter which left me with a birthmark. That’s what I paint: the wallaby mother and daughter.’

 

Categories: Ikuntji Artists

Name: Eunice Napanangka Jack


Language: Luritja, Ngaanyatjarra, Pintupi


Community: Haasts Bluff


Biography:

Eunice was born in 1940 at Lupul in the Sir Frederick Ranges. When Eunice was a little girl, and like so many other Aboriginal families at the time, shortages of food forced her family east towards the ration stations being set up in central Australia. She remembers the travels with her family very vividly and refers to it as when her mother carried her piggy back all the way from Western Australia to Haasts Bluff.

Now an important woman in the community Eunice is well known for her hunting skills, dancing and traditional law knowledge. Eunice started painting with the opening of the Ikuntji Women's Centre in August of 1992. Prior to that during the 1970s she assisted her husband Gideon Tjupurrula Jack who was painting at Papunya Tula. Eunice's paintings are interpretations of her country near Lake Mackay. She uses layers of colour to build up a vision of the bush flowers and grasses. Amongst this landscape Eunice's personal stories are told, either of the travelling of her tjukurrpa - the Bilby - or the people who once lived in the area. Her father was Tutuma Tjapangarti, one of the first men to paint for Papunya Tula. Eunice also paints his country, which includes Tjukurla, Tjila, Kurulto and Lupul. Her mother was from the Walpiri side of Lake Mackay - Winparrku - in Western Australia. A brilliant colourist, Eunice's Hairstring, Tali (sandhill), Mungada (apple) and wildflower paintings display great talent and dedication to her profession and traditions. Her Hairstring works are made up of thousands of varied colour strokes, representing the hair being rolled on women's thighs to make bags and clothing. Her Mungada (apple) works hold myriad dusted mauve circles overlaying the ground of varicoloured-feathered brushwork. Highly collectable, Eunice is represented in leading galleries worldwide.


© the artist / art centre