POLLY NELSON NANGALA - Bush Plum

DOB: c.1940 – 21 August 2022. Utopia, Northern Territory
Known as: Polly Nangala, Polly Ngale, Polly Nelson Nangala, Polly Nelson Ngale, Polly Nungala, Polly Ngal
Language: Anmatyerre / Alyawarre
Dreamings: Awelye (women's ceremony and body paint designs) & Bush Plum (Arnwetky)

Polly was among the last of a generation of Utopia women elders, and held deep custodial responsibility for her country, Alparra/Ahalpere. She shared this country, and the Bush Plum (Arnwetky) Dreaming tied to it, with her sisters Kathleen Ngale and Angeline Pwerle.

Like many Utopia women of her generation, Polly's artistic life started with batik on silk in the late 1970s, part of a broader movement where the women of Utopia began putting their cultural knowledge into a new visual language. By the late 1980s she'd moved onto acrylic on canvas and linen, and it was here that her painting really found its own voice a build-up of colour, layer over layer, that gave her work a shimmering, almost weather-like quality.

Her paintings speak to Bush Plum and Awelye, and through them she carried forward ceremonial knowledge and body-painting traditions handed down through generations of Anmatyerre women.

Over her career, Polly's work travelled well beyond Utopia shown in Sydney (1989), Paris (2004, 2018), Tokyo (2008, alongside Emily Kame Kngwarreye), New York (2018), and Brisbane (2021), and named a finalist in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. Today her paintings sit in major public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Holmes à Court Collection, and the World Bank's collection in Washington DC.

Even as her eyesight failed badly in her final years, Polly kept painting her connection to the practice held right through to her passing in 2022.

This painting was purchased directly from Polly and comes with a gallery certificate of authenticity along with a photo of Polly holding the finished work.