LUCY LOOMOO NUNGURRAYI

BORN: c 1938
REGION:
BALGO HILLS- WESTERN AUSTRALIA
LANGUAGE GROUP: WANGKATJUNKA

View Lucy’s artwork here

Lucy Loomoo was born c 1938, near Jupiter Well in The Great Sandy Desert, far to the South of Balgo and close to the middle stretches of the Canning Stock Route. She spent her childhood in Ilangarri, her Mother’s and Grandfather’s country.

Later, she, her husband and first child, walked all the way up the Canning Stock Route to arrive at Old Balgo Mission.

Lucy and her family lived at the Old Mission where Lucy tended the sheep and goats. Here they had another child before moving to the new mission site in the 1960s. Lucy gave birth to another two children and worked as a gardener at the new mission site.

She commenced painting for Warlayriti Artists in 1988 and usually depicts the Tingari Dreaming. She also paints country called Ingangarri.
This place takes its name from the soakwater, or ‘Tjurrnu’. The Tjurrnu, Ingangarra is near Well 33 on The Canning Stock Route.  The small dots surrounding Ingangarra depict karkugura, a small sweet berry collected in the area.

Her bold colours and her adherence to the traditional way of expressing Women’s Law, make Lucy’s paintings very recognisable.

EXHIBITIONS

Group exhibitions 2002 Balgo, Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth 2002 Passing it On: Works from Balgo Hills, Coomalie Cultural Centre, Batchelor?2001 Short on Size, Short St. Gallery, Broome 2001 Desert Mob, Araluen Centre, Alice Springs 2001 New Paintings from Balgo, Cutliffe Gallery, Sydney 1998 The Laverty Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 1997 Desert Country, Matso’s, Broome 1997 Dreamings, Arnhem, The Netherlands 1995 Aboriginal Paintings and Prints, on loan from the collection of Robert and Barbara Bromberg, New Visions Gallery, Marshfield, Wisconsin, USA 1993 Wirrimanu: the Art of Balgo Hills, Coo-ee Aboriginal Art Gallery, Sydney 1992 Warlayirti Artists’ Homelands, Coo-ee Aboriginal Art Gallery, Paddington 1992 Broome Fringe Festival, Broome 1991 A Focus on Western Australia, Crafts Council of NSW, The Rocks, Sydney 1991 Paintings by Senior Women from the Western Desert, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne 1991 Some Aboriginal Women: A Survey of Contemporary Women’s Art, Coo-ee Aboriginal Art Gallery, Paddington 1990 Songlines: Paintings from Balgo Hills, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London 1990 The Singing Earth, Chapman Gallery, Canberra 1990 Warlayirti Artists, Birukmarri Gallery, Freemantle 1989 Warlayirti Artists: Continuing Links with Land, Coo-ee Aboriginal Art Gallery, Paddington

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Holmes a Court Collection; Museums and Art Galleries of Northern Territory, Darwin; University of Western Australia Anthropology Museum, Perth; Artbank, Sydney; Galeria R, Poznan, Poland; The Kelton Foundation, Santa Monica, U.S.A.; and private and corporate collections around the world.

COLLECTIONS

Laverty Collection, Artbank Collection

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