aboriginal artist: Ngoia Napaltjarri

View artworks by Ngoia Napaltjarri

BORN: c. 1948-

COUNTRY: Haasts Bluff

LAUNGUAGE: Walpiri

Ngoia Pollard Napaltjarri (born c. 1948; also known as Ngnoia) is a Walpiri-speaking artist from Australia’s Western Desert region.

Ngoia was born in Haasts Bluff, a daughter of Angoona Nangala and Jim Tjungurrayi. Her husband (deceased) Jack Tjampijinpa Pollard was a very important artist painting for the Papunya Tula Artists community.

She paints her father’s country, which is sacred Walpiri territory associated with

narratives to the ‘water snake’. The oval shapes in her paintings are iconographic

representation of the swamps and lakes near Nyrripi (Talarada) North West of Mount Liebig where Ngoia lives. She depicts the wet and dry characteristics of the country. This region is changed with the spiritual presence of the ‘water snake’, which lives beneath the surface. This is the area where her father hunted.

Having commenced painting in 1997, Ngoia Pollard won a major regional art prize in 2004. She went on to win the painting prize in the 2006 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. Her works are held in major private and public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia.

Awards

2006 – Winner 23rd Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
2004 1st Prize in the Advocate Central Australian Award.
2002 selected in the prestigious Northern Territory Art Award
2003 selected in the prestigious Northern Territory Art Award for the Telstra Prize

Collections

Artbank, Sydney.

National Australian Art Gallery, Canberra.

Thomas Vroom collection on loan to the Aboriginal Art Museum, Utrecht the Nederland’s.

Private and cooperate collections in Australia, Denmark and Germany