Sold at Auction: Yinarupa Nangala

Yinarupa Gibson Nangala is a Pintupi Aboriginal artist, born in the bush at Mukula in the early 1960s, in the region near today’s settlement of Kiwirrkura in Western Australia. Yinarupa is the daughter of Papunya Tula Artist, Anatjari Tjampitjinpa, and co-wife of the late Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi. Thus, she is related by marriage into the families of Aboriginal artists George Ward Tjungurrayi and Willy Tjungurrayi. One of Yala Yala’s other wives was Ningara Napurrula. The mother of five sons, Yinarupa spends her time between her community of Kiwirrkurra and Alice Springs.

Yinarupa started painting in 1996 and in 2009 she won the General Painting Award in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands Art Awards. Her paintings depict topographic renderings of her birthplace, Mukula. Yinarupa and her family lived and travelled throughout this region until 1963, when they met up with a Northern Territory welfare patrol led by Jeremy Long. Yinarupa was taken to the settlement at Papunya, where she attended school and subsequently married the late Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi.