Daisy Jugadai Napaltjarri

Daisy Jugadai Napaltjarri
Born	c.1955 (2011-11-21T19:55) Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory
Died	2008 (2009)
Nationality	Australian
Field	Painting
Awards	Finalist, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award: 1995, 1998, 2001 Section winner, NATSIAA: 2000

Daisy Jugadai Napaltjarri (c. 1955–2008) was a Pintupi- and Luritja-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region, and sister of artist Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri. Daisy Jugadai lived and painted at Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory, where she played a significant role in the establishment of Ikuntji Women's Centre, where many artists of the region have painted.

Jugadai's works were selected for exhibition at the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards five times between 1993 and 2001, and she was a section winner in 2000. Her paintings are held in major collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Australia and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.

Life

Haasts Bluff, where Daisy Jugadai was born.

Daisy Jugadai was born circa 1955 at Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory, daughter of artists Narputta Nangala and Timmy Jugadai Tjungurrayi.^[1] The ambiguity around the year of birth is in part because Indigenous Australians operate using a different conception of time, often estimating dates through comparisons with the occurrence of other events.^[2]

'Napaljarri' (in Warlpiri) or 'Napaltjarri' (in Western Desert dialects) is a skin name, one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners and may be associated with particular totems. Although they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans.^[3][4] Thus 'Daisy Jugadai' is the element of the artist's name that is specifically hers.

Jugadai's childhood was spent at both Haasts Bluff and a nearby camp, Five Mile, while she was schooled at Papunya. She married Kelly Multa, and they had a daughter Agnes. They lived on an outstation, Kungkayunti, but Daisy moved back to Haasts Bluff when Kelly died.^[5] It was not until the 1990s that she was remarried, to an Elcho Islander, after which she travelled regularly between Arnhem Land and Haasts Bluff. Jugadai died in 2008, her funeral held at Haasts Bluff, where she was born.^[5] Daisy Jugadai had an older sister, artist Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri,^[6] and another sister, Ester, who predeceased her.^[5]

Art

Background

Contemporary Indigenous art of the western desert began when Indigenous men at Papunya began painting in 1971, assisted by teacher Geoffrey Bardon.^[7] This initiative, which used acrylic paints to create designs representing body painting and ground sculptures, rapidly spread across Indigenous communities of central Australia, particularly following the commencement of a government-sanctioned art program in central Australia in 1983.^[8] By the 1980s and 1990s, such work was being exhibited internationally.^[9] The first artists, including all of the founders of the Papunya Tula artists' company, had been men, and there was resistance amongst the Pintupi men of central Australia to women painting.^[10] However, there was also a desire amongst many of the women to participate, and in the 1990s large numbers of them began to create paintings. In the western desert communities such as Kintore, Yuendumu, Balgo, and on the outstations, people were beginning to create art works expressly for exhibition and sale.^[9] Daisy Jugadai learned to draw during her schooling at Papunya and Haasts Bluff.^[11] From the Pintupi/Luritja language group, Daisy Jugadai was one of a range of artists who came to painting through the Ikuntji Women's Centre in the early 1990s.^[1] She is credited with a significant role in the centre's establishment.^[11] She began with screen-printing and linocut printmaking, but quickly shifted to acrylic painting, producing many of her best works during the mid 1990s.^[11] Western Desert artists such as Daisy Jugadai will frequently paint particular 'dreamings', or stories, for which they have personal responsibility or rights.^[12] In Jugadai's case, these include honey ant, spinifex and emu dreamings.^[13]

Career

Throughout the 1990s, Daisy Jugadai was a regular exhibitor at the Araluen Art Centre in Alice Springs, and well as other major exhibitions such as the Australian Heritage Art Awards in Canberra in 1994.^[1] Recognition came in form of an award of a Northern Territory Women's Fellowship in 1993.^[5] She was one of a group of artists whose work was selected for an exhibition that toured regional Australian public galleries in 1999–2000, Ikuntji tjuta – touring, which was curated by Marina Strocchi, the art centre coordinator who had first helped develop the Ikuntji centre in Haasts Bluff some years earlier.^[14]

Works by Daisy Jugadai are held by the National Gallery of Victoria,^[15] National Gallery of Australia and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.^[1] They are also held in major private collections, such as Nangara (also known as the Ebes Collection).^[16] A finalist in the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards on several occasions,^[1] she was a section winner in 2000.^[5] Her work is also featured alongside other Indigenous artists such as Gloria Petyarre in the Melbourne international airport terminal, completed in 1996.^[17] Antiti, near Five Mile, a 1998 painting, has appeared as cover art on an issue of the Medical Journal of Australia.^[18]

Style

Alone amongst the Ikuntji artists, Daisy Jugadai worked at an easel. She cited the Hermannsburg School, a group of Indigenous artists including Albert Namatjira who began painting at Hermannsburg Mission in the 1930s, as an influence on her work.^[11] Her works reflect her Tjuukurrpa, the complex spiritual knowledge and relationships between her and her landscape;^[19] she also portrayed those of her late husband and late father.^[11] Her painting reflects fine observation of the complex structures of the vegetation and environment, its features "obsessively detailed", with the artist "devotedly [including] all the bush tucker of that area", as well as choosing "a time of year in which to depict her country".^[14] Vegetation would be carefully painted with a trimmed brush, while even finer detail, such as pollen, would be painted using a matchstick. Despite this devotion to detail, Daisy preferred to paint large canvasses.^[5]

Artist Mandy Martin, who participated in a 2005 collaboration with several painters from the Haasts Bluff region, thought that Daisy's rendering of bush tucker was achieved with a "stylised but dazzling personal language".^[20] Writer and critic Morag Fraser described Daisy's work as "extraordinary", observing that in Daisy's paintings "nature is so wholly internalised, and its rendering so uninhibited."^[21]

Collections

• Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory^[1]
• National Gallery of Australia^[1]
• National Gallery of Victoria^[15]

Awards

• 1993 — exhibited, 10th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award^[13]
• 1995 — finalist, 12th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award^[1]
• 1998 — finalist, 15th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award^[1]
• 2000 — section winner, 17th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award^[5]
• 2001 — finalist, 18th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award^[1]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Birnberg, Margo; Janusz Kreczmanski (2004). Aboriginal Artist Dictionary of Biographies: Australian Western, Central Desert and Kimberley Region. Marleston, South Australia: J.B. Publishing. pp. 213–214. ISBN 1-876622-47-4. 
2. ^ Birnberg, Margo; Janusz Kreczmanski (2004). Aboriginal Artist Dictionary of Biographies: Australian Western, Central Desert and Kimberley Region. Marleston, South Australia: J.B. Publishing. pp. 10–12. ISBN 1-876622-47-4. 
3. ^ "Kinship and skin names". People and culture. Central Land Council. Archived from the original on 12 October 2010. http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clc.org.au%2FPeople_Culture%2Fkinship%2Fkinship.html&date=2010-10-11. Retrieved 23 October 2009. 
4. ^ De Brabander, Dallas (1994). "Sections". In David Horton. Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. 2. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. p. 977. ISBN 9780855752347. 
5. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Strocchi, Marina (2008). "Daisy Napaltjarri Jugadai (art tribute)". Art and Australia 46 (1): 61. 
6. ^ Martin, Mandy; Libby Robin and Mike Smith (2005). Strata: deserts past, present and future. Canberra: Land & Water Australia. p. 50. ISBN 0957748140. http://geography.anu.edu.au/publications/books/pdfs/strata.pdf. 
7. ^ Bardon, Geoffrey; James Bardon (2006). Papunya – A place made after the story: The beginnings of the Western Desert painting movement. University of Melbourne: Miegunyah Press. 
8. ^ Dussart, Francoise (2006). "Canvassing identities: reflecting on the acrylic art movement in an Australian Aboriginal settlement". Aboriginal History 30: 156–168. 
9. ^ ^{a b} Morphy, Howard (1999). Aboriginal Art. London: Phaidon. pp. 261–316. ISBN 0714837520. 
10. ^ Strocchi, Marina (2006). "Minyma Tjukurrpa: Kintore / Haasts Bluff Canvas Project: Dancing women to famous painters". Artlink 26 (4). 
11. ^ ^{a b c d e} Kleinert, Sylvia; Margot Neale (2000). The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal art and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 613. ISBN 0195506499. 
12. ^ Johnson, Vivien (1994). "Introduction". Aboriginal Artists of the Western Desert: A Biographical Dictionary. Roseville East, NSW: Craftsman House. pp. 7–12. 
13. ^ ^{a b} Johnson, Vivien (1994). Aboriginal Artists of the Western Desert: A Biographical Dictionary. Roseville East, NSW: Craftsman House. p. 116. 
14. ^ ^{a b} Strocchi, Marina (1999). Ikuntji tjuta: touring. Campbelltown, NSW: Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery. 
15. ^ ^{a b} "Daisy Napaljarri Jugadai – Memory and Five Mile Creek 1995". NGV Collection. National Gallery of Victoria. http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/collection/pub/artistItemListing?view=fwimg&artistID=4176&page=1. Retrieved 2 July 2009. ^{[dead link]}
16. ^ "The artists". Nangara: the Australian Aboriginal art exhibition. http://www.nangara.com/collection/artists.htm. Retrieved 2 July 2009. 
17. ^ Battersby, Jean (1996). "Art and Airports 2". Craft Arts International 37: 49–64. 
18. ^ "[Cover image]". Medical Journal of Australia 176 (10): cover. 20 May 2002. http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/176_10_200502/contents_200502.pdf. Retrieved 13 December 2009. 
19. ^ "Tjukurpa – Anangu culture". Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park. Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. 2009. http://environment.gov.au/parks/uluru/culture-history/culture/index.html. Retrieved 18 July 2009. 
20. ^ Martin, Mandy (2005). "Desert of the mind’s eye". In Mandy Martin, Libby Robin and Mike Smith. Strata: deserts past, present and future. Canberra: Land & Water Australia. pp. 15. ISBN 0957748140. http://geography.anu.edu.au/publications/books/pdfs/strata.pdf. Retrieved 2 April 2010. 
21. ^ Fraser, Morag (1999). "Substance and illusion: crosscurrents in Australian landscape painting and Australian literature". LiNQ 26 (1): 30. 

Persondata
Name	Daisy Jugadai Napaltjarri
Alternative names
Short description	Pintupi– and Luritja–speaking Indigenous Australian artist
Date of birth	c. 1955
Place of birth	Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory
Date of death	2008
Place of death