Nada Rawlins Paintings

About Nada Rawlins

Date of Birth

c. 1936 – 2019

Place of Birth

Kirriwirri,
Great Sandy Desert

Language

Wangkatjungka

Family

Wangkatjungka

Career

Wangkatjungka artist Nada Rawlins is represented in major national collections including National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Art Gallery of Western Australia. Her paintings of her birth country around the Percival Lakes detail the desert landscape and the critical locations of waterholes and soaks that exist in and around the salt pan country.

Nada Rawlins was born c.1936 near Kirriwirri in the southern-most section of Wangkatjungka country, in Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. This country incorporates Percival Lakes, a chain of salt lakes that stretches hundreds of kilometres across the desert. The traditional owners, including Nada’s family and relatives, were custodians of this country and knew the sources of fresh water, which were often located within the salt lakes themselves.

Of her life, Nada says: “I was born in the desert- in the bush. My mother never put me in a blanket. I never saw my father – another father grow me up. We came from the desert along the Canning Stock Route when I was a young girl. We walked through Billiluna.

One kartiya (whiteman) called Len Brown picked us up early in the morning in a truck. He took us to Moola Bulla. I had a sore on my arm and they took me to the clinic. They gave me lots of needles. When my sore was better I lived with my family at Moola Bulla.

Then we walked alongside the river to Christmas Creek. We had no motorcar, carried everything- swag, billycan, sticks, on our heads. Three mothers and old man. Elsie Thomas and I worked together– get firewood, cook damper. No kids- just look after old people. I been sick one. Maybe old people from here make me sick. Long time been sick.”

Nada Rawlins began painting in Fitzroy Crossing in the mid 1980s at the Karriyili Adult Education Centre. She 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 clan’s survival.

After Wangkatjungka Community was established near Christmas Creek Station, 120 km southeast of Fitzroy Crossing, Nada moved from the township to live at the community created for her countrymen. She joined other Wangkatjungka artists who had begun painting and exhibiting together through the art program set up by Karriyili Adult Education during the years 1994-98.

In 1998, senior Wangkatjungka artists completed a large collaborative canvas mapping out their traditional country, a painting that is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. In 2002, in collaboration with Japingka Gallery, Wangkatjungka artists began an active program of community exhibitions to present their works around Australia. Nada Rawlins has been a major contributor to these exhibitions, and her work is represented in major private collections and State Gallery collections.

Selected Exhibitions

1991 Karrayili Tandanya, Adelaide
1992 Group Show, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney
1993 Images of Power, Aboriginal Art from Kimberleys, National Gallery of Victoria
1993 Mangkaja Women Fremantle Arts Centre
1994 Ngajakura Ngurrara Minyarti, this is my country, Artplace Gallery, Perth
1995 Group Show, Australian Perspectives Gallery, Brisbane
1995 Kimberley Art, Melbourne
1995 National Aboriginal Art Award, Selected to hang
1996 Group Show, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney
1996 Group Show, Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle WA
1996 Heritage Commission Art Award, Old Parliament House, Canberra
1997 Group Show, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney
1998 Group Show, Rebeca Hossack Gallery, London
1999 Ngurrara, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2000 Women’s Work – Hogarth Gallery, Sydney NSW
2001 Alliance Francais Canberra ACT
2001 Ngurrara Canvas, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra ACT
2001 Little Gems, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2001 Mangkaja Arts Ten Years On, Mangkaja Arts
2001 Group Show, Tandanya, Adelaide SA
2002 Group Show, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne VIC
2002 Strength of Line Drypoints and Etchings, From the NTU Collection Darwin
2003 Mangkaja Women – Raft Artspace, Darwin NT
2003 Artists of Wangkatjungka – From the Great Sandy Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2004 Jila & Tali – Waterholes and Sandhills, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT
2004 Striking Colours of the Living Desert – Wankatjungka Country, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney
2004 Art Trade Auction, Darwin NT
2004 Tali and Jila – Sandhills and Waterholes, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2004 Jila & Tali – Waterholes and Sandhills, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT
2004 Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane QLD
2004 Artists of Wangkatjungka – Stories of Country, Raintree Gallery, Darwin NT
2004 Divas of The Desert, Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs NT
2005 Artists of Wangkatjungka, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney, NSW
2005 Yirmpurr (Living Water) Recent Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT
2005 Wangkatjungka, Ladner and Fell Gallery, Melbourne, VIC
2005 Wangkatjungka Artists: Stories from The Great Sandy Desert, Tandanya, National Aboriginal Cultural Institute Adelaide SA
2006 Wangkatjungka Artists, Hogarth Galleries Sydney NSW
2007 Wangkatjungka Mapping Country, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2007 Desert Mosaic, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2008 Wangkatjungka Artists, Canning Stock Route, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2009 Desert Rains – Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2009 Kids and Mentors, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2010 Wangkatjungka Artists, Biddee Baadjo and Nada Rawlins, Kate Owen Gallery, Sydney NSW
2010 Wangkatjungka Artists, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne VIC
2010 Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2013 I colori del deserto, Galleria Isarte (in collaboration with Japingka Gallery), Milan ITALY
2025 Kirriwirri- Nada Rawlins – view exhibition

Publications

1991 Karrayili, 10 Years on Exhibition Catalogue, Tandanya, Adelaide
1991 Aboriginal Women’s Exhibition Catalogue, Art Gallery of New South Wales
1993 Mangkaja Women’s Exhibition Catalogue, National Gallery of Victoria
1994 Ngajakura Ngurrara Minyarti, This is My Country, Exhibition Catalogue
1998 Jila Painted Waters of the Great Sandy Desert, Video Documentary/ SBS Television
2000 Ngurrara Entry / Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art -Oxford University Press & ANU
2000 Karrayili The history of Karrayili Adult Education Centre -IATSIS Canberra
2001 Painting Up Big, The Ngurrara Canvas -Kaltja Now National Aboriginal Cultural Institute
2006 Wangkatjungka- Artists of the Great Sandy Desert, ART MOB, Hobart
2006 Wangkatjungka Group Exhibition, Helen Maxwell, ACT

Collections

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
National Gallery of Victoria
Art Gallery of Western Australia
National Museum Australia – Nada Rawlins

Read

Nada Rawlins – Celebrating Survival and Replenishment
The Wangkatjungka Remote School Mentors Project