Kirriwirri – Nada Rawlins

Nada Rawlins (c1936- 2019) painted her country around Kirriwirri in the Great Sandy Desert near the chain of salt lakes called Percival Lakes. Nada says: “I was born in the desert, in the bush. My mother never put me in a blanket. We came from the desert along the Canning Stock Route when I was a young girl, we walked through Billiluna. Then we walked alongside the river to Christmas Creek. We had no motorcar, carried everything – swag, billycan, sticks, on our heads.”

Nada Rawlins began painting in the mid 1980s in Fitzroy Crossing and exhibited regularly from 1991 through to 2013. She was an active member of the artists group at Wangkatjungka community where she lived. Nada developed a style of painting her desert homelands in areas of saturated colour that represented her ancestral country and the dominating salt lakes and specific waterholes that were critical to her family’s survival.

Nada’s work is held in major collections including National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Art Gallery of Western Australia. The exhibition is on display at Japingka from 19 September 2025.