Bambatu Napangardi

From Winron, Pintupi country, across the Western Australian border, east of Kiwirrkura. Bambatu Napangardi was born around 1940 and grew up living the traditional nomadic life of hunting and gathering bush tucker with her extended family, as the Aboriginal people did for thousands of years before her.

She began her artistic career by painting ancestral dreamtime stories handed down to her by her mother and her father and also from her internationally renowned husband, the late Dinni Campbell Tjampitjinpa (2000). She is also sister to highly acclaimed artists Charlie Tjapangardi, Dorothy Napangardi and Nanyuma Napangardi.

Bambatu’s “Water Dreaming” paintings depict the paths travelled by ancestral ceremonial women, as they travelled from the waterholes of Wirrulunga, Central Australia to the Papunya region. At each location, the women would stop, dance and sing the cycle of each sacred site. Bambatu is a respected Papunya Tula artist, with her works having been extensively exhibited and collected worldwide.