Gwenda Turner Nungurrayi - In Her Own Words
Gwenda Turner Nungurrayi is a Warlpiri painter from Yuelamu (Mt Allen), north-west of Alice Springs. Daughter of the celebrated Maureen Hudson Nampijinpa, she has been painting for over thirty years. We sat down with Gwenda at our Adelaide gallery to talk about her technique, her stories and what drives her work.
On her technique
Where many Warlpiri painters use a stick to apply paint, Gwenda works with bottles - small, precise, giving her direct control over every dot and line. It is a technique she developed herself, and it is central to the signature quality of her work: the flowing, wavy lines of dots that build up her sand dunes with a quiet, rhythmic precision.
When she begins a new canvas, she reaches for white and cream first. There is no sketching, no preliminary drawing.
"It comes natural."
You can read more about the dot painting tradition on our What is Dot Painting page.
On the stories she paints
Gwenda paints two Dreamings - the sand dunes of her traditional country Warlukurlangu, and Budgerigar Dreaming. Both stories were passed to her by her mother Maureen, who gave them directly to Gwenda and her sister Julieanne. When asked which she prefers, her answer is immediate - the budgerigar.
"Lot of budgeries in Alice Springs."
Gwenda knows these birds. She has watched them move through the landscape her whole life, and that familiarity is in every painting.
The two sisters paint the same Dreaming but see them differently. Julieanne's eye moves to the landscape - the bush tucker, the flowers, the country that surrounds the birds. Gwenda is drawn to the bird itself. The budgerigar in motion. The tracks it leaves in the earth when it forages.
She paints both with equal care - but she knows where her heart is.
You can read more about Dreaming stories and what they mean on our What is Aboriginal Art page.
On canvas size
Given the choice, Gwenda reaches for the bigger canvas. More room for the story. More room for the lines to breathe.
On her mother and her family
Maureen Hudson Nampijinpa is one of the most significant Warlpiri painters of her generation - a woman whose work is known throughout Australia and internationally. Growing up in her shadow, Gwenda learned to paint from her mother directly. She started at fifteen. She has not stopped since.
What Gwenda's work has done over thirty-one years is quietly separate itself. The style that began close to Maureen's has become its own thing - more intricate, more personal, more distinctly hers.
The family connections run deep. Maureen is blood cousins with the late Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri - one of the founding figures of the Western Desert art movement and among the most celebrated Aboriginal artists of the twentieth century. Through that connection, Gwenda grew up around Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Clifford's daughter and herself a highly regarded painter. They would paint at the same time, side by side - not teaching, not following, simply sharing the same space and the same practice.
It is the kind of artistic formation that cannot be manufactured.
You can view Maureen Hudson Nampijinpa's work in our Maureen Hudson Nampijinpa collection.
About Gwenda Turner Nungurrayi
Gwenda Turner Nungurrayi is a Warlpiri painter born in 1978 at Yuelamu (Mt Allen) near Yuendumu, north-west of Alice Springs. She is the daughter of Maureen Hudson Nampijinpa and has been painting since the age of fifteen. She paints the sand dunes of her traditional country Warlukurlangu and Budgerigar Dreaming - stories inherited directly from her mother. Her work is held in private collections in Australia and internationally.
Art by Farquhar is a member of the Australian Aboriginal Art Association. Every painting comes with a Certificate of Authenticity and full provenance documentation.