Michelle Possum Nungurrayi
DOB: 1970
BORN: Mt. Allan, NT
LANGUAGE GROUP : Anmatyerre
COMMUNITY: Alice Springs, NT
Painting comes with COA,
Painting will be sent rolled in a tube
Michelle Possum Nungurrayi is the younger daughter of
Luritja woman, Emily Nakamarra Possum, and the famous Clifford Possum
Tjapaltjarri, renowned for being one of the founding artists of the
contemporary indigenous art movement, and for being the artist whose work has
achieved the highest price at auction for an Australian Indigenous artwork.
Her life began in the remote Mt. Allan, to the north west of
Alice Springs, in Australia's Northern Territory. She married Heath Ramzan Tjangala,
and has had six children.
Michelle, her sister Gabriella and brother Lionel, were
taught to paint by their highly talented father. She began painting at a young
age in the mid 1980's and to this day, carries on the traditional stories,
style and much of the iconography of Clifford Possum, albeit with stronger
colour and the addition of women's ceremonial stories and other women's
dreamings.
These include stories from Yuelamu, her home country of Mt
Allan, and are often aerial maps of her country, describing the various
important sites she knows well. The traditional and semi figurative iconography
she inherited from her father features strongly in her works. She also paints
the seven sisters, bush tucker stories including bush coconut, seed, and exploding
seed dreamings, fire dreamings, worm dreamings, goanna dreaming, and
grandmother's country - many of which she works together in a riot of complex
interwoven design.
Her works are popular because once the iconography is
understood, they make fascinating 'pictures' to the westerner, populated not
only with plants, food items, waterholes etc. but also with people sitting in
the landscape, the men with hunting implements and the women with digging
sticks and coolamons.
Her first exhibition was a family group show in Brisbane,
1987, where her works were exhibited alongside those of her father and sister
Gabriella.