Description

Extended Data

DAAO URL

https://www.daao.org.au/bio/tilau-nangala

Birth Place

Haasts Bluff, NT, Australia

Biography

Tilau Nangala was born c. 1933 at Haasts Bluff, of Ngaliya parents. She grew up around Haasts Bluff speaking Warlpiri and Luritja. Her father’s country was the major Rain Dreaming site of Mikantji in Warlpiri territory and her mother and uncle’s country was around Haasts Bluff. Nangala never attended school – during her childhood the family still lived in the bush, supplementing their diet of bush tucker with supplies collected from Haasts Bluff ration depot. The family came across from Haasts Bluff to Papunya in the first days of the settlement. Nangala was already married to Henry Jugadai Tjungurrayi and had two daughters, Rosalie Jugadai Napaltjarri and Marjorie Nelson Napaltjarri, both born in Haasts Bluff. Two more daughters, Mavis and Monica, and a son, Mark, were born in Papunya. Nangala remained at Papunya. She often resides at Five Mile, an outstation of Papunya, with her daughter Rosalie and some of her many grandchildren, and, more frequently with time, the widows’ camp near the Papunya police station. In the past Nangala was a carver of coolamons and clap sticks and a prodigious maker of ininiti seed necklaces, later becoming a painter. She has also produced prints with Cicada Press. She likes to paint sitting with the Nampitjinpas and Nangalas – her 'aunties’ and 'nieces’, she said. Nangala’s sister Yuwari Nangala (b. 1929 – d. Haasts Bluff) married Henry Jugadai’s brother Andy Tjungurrayi and also painted for Warumpi Arts. Another older sister (mother’s sister’s daughter) also known as Tilo Nangala, now deceased, painted for Warlukurlangu Artists at Yuendumu in the mid 1980s. Nangala worked in the Papunya Hospital, in the old Papunya communal kitchen and later in the Papunya School, passing on her love of dancing to the children. Her deeply felt knowledge of country and ceremony empowers her bold expressive work. The great Water Dreaming site of Mikantji is nearly always its subject. She says her auntie, not her father, taught her her culture and stories but she developed her own ideas on how to paint it, starting with Warumpi Arts in the 1990s and resuming with Papunya Tjupi Arts in 2006. She paints “so the children can watch me paint and learn, so I can pass on my Dreaming and stories to my grandchildren. Papunya Tjupi is my uncle (mother’s brother)'s country.” (Nangala 2009, pers. comm.). Writers: Papunya Tjupi Arts Date written: 2009 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. c.1933

Summary

Tilau Nangala is a senior law woman and respected elder in the Papunya community, where she paints for Papunya Tjupi Art Centre and has taught both her daughters and granddaughters to paint.

Gender

Female

Died

None listed

Age at death

None listed