Warlpiri artist Dorothy Napangardi (1952 – 2013) was from Mina Mina, in the Tanami Desert, north of Yuendumu in Central Australia. Her finely painted minimal depiction’s of ‘Women’s Dreaming on the Mina Mina have deservedly won her critical and popular acclaim.
Creating her own unique language to describe her father’s homeland at Lake McKay, Dorothy’s paintings are shaped by an interlacing network of dotted lines. These lines form both a micro and a macro study of the land; creating the homeland topography while telling a story of the ancestral tracks. These lines represent the salt encrustations around the dry claypans etched with the tracks of the women.
Dorothy Napangardi is regarded as one of the leading artists of the contemporary Aboriginal Art movement with her works featuring in exhibitions throughout Australia, the USA and Europe. In 2001 Dorothy won the 18th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award.
Discover more about this artwork: Art educator Alice McAuliffe and academic Jennifer Newman discussed Napangardi’s Karntakurlangu (Salt on Mina Mina) and other artworks from the UTS Art Collection in a series of videos in relation to the eight essential understandings that comprise the REM Framework that underpins UTS Health Faculty’s Indigenous Knowledge graduate attribute program.