Nyarapayi Giles c. 1933-2019

Nyarapayi Giles (c. 1933 - 2019) was a respected elder Ngaanyatjarra woman of Tjukurla, an Aboriginal community in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia. She was widely celebrated as an important - and distinctive visionary - of the desert painting tradition. 

Tjukurla lies between Kintore and Kaltukatjara (Docker River) resting on the banks of an significant enclosed body of saltwater, Lake Hopkins. Its surrounding landscape bears sandhills, claypans and desert oak trees. Karrku, where Giles was born, is an important cultural site associated with the Karlaya Tjukurrpa (Emu Dreaming). The story tells of ancestral emus that discovered the local ochre deposit containing fine-grained powder that, when combined with water, transformed into a red, sanguineous substance. Red ochre, such as that found at Karrku, holds ceremonial weight, used in initiative body painting and later by artists on canvas. 

Her profound and extensive knowledge of inma (ceremonies) and tjukurpa (dreaming stories) as a respected spiritual elder of her community underlies her painting - coupled with an intimate knowledge of, and reverence for, the land. Giles and her family settled in Tjukurla when the settlement was first established in the 1980s. Like many women of the community, the artist was involved with the craft practise of purnu (wood carving) before transcribing her care for her country in acrylic paint on canvas: a practise that came to her in her late autumn years,  just four years before her death in 2019. 

Giles’s work is distinctive for its painterly manner, juxtaposing clotted dot-and-circle motifs with swipes of jewel-like colour in dynamic flow. The effect is an exquisite and unique expression of colour and movement, juxtaposing pale, feathery tones with rich blues and tawny pinks. Perspectively, the artist maps the topography from an aerial perspective, as if a bird flying over her desert homeland. 

Nyarapyi Giles is widely acknowledged as one of the leading artists from Ngaanyatjarra Country. In 2008, she was nominated as a finalist for the prestigious 2008 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award (NATSIAA) and was awarded First Prize in the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital Art Award that same year. Giles’ posthumous reputation continues to develop with more recent exhibitions of her works in London.