Susie Bootja Bootja Napaltjarri

Susie Bootja Bootja Napaltjarri (also referred to as Susie Bootja Bootja Napangardi, the National Gallery of Victoria suggests 1935, while the Oxford Companion to Aboriginal art and culture suggests 1936. |group=notes near Kurtal, or Helena Spring, south-west of Balgo, Western Australia; While sources vary as to Susie's skin name (some indicating Napangarti, others Napaltjarri), the similar birth dates, locations, and work history indicate that all are referring to the one individual.

'Napaljarri' (in Warlpiri) or 'Napaltjarri' (in Western Desert dialects) is a skin name, one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners and may be associated with particular totems. Although they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans. Thus 'Susie Bootja Bootja' is the element of the artist's name that is specifically hers.

Susie Bootja Bootja was of the Kukatja language group. She married artist Mick Gill Tjakamarra at Old Balgo in the 1950s, and they had a son, Matthew Gill Tjupurrula (born 1960), who also became an artist. Their work, which used acrylic paints to create designs representing body painting and ground sculptures, rapidly spread across Indigenous communities of central Australia, particularly following the commencement of a government-sanctioned art program in central Australia in 1983. By the 1980s and 1990s, such work was being exhibited internationally. The first artists, including all of the founders of the Papunya Tula artists' company, had been men, and there was resistance amongst the Pintupi men of central Australia to women painting. However, there was also a desire amongst many of the women to participate, and in the 1990s large numbers of them began to create paintings. In the western desert communities such as Kintore, Yuendumu, Balgo, and on the outstations, people were beginning to create art works expressly for exhibition and sale.

Career The Balgo community did not establish an art centre for more than ten years after their colleagues at Papunya, with artistic activities commencing when an adult education centre was opened in 1981. However once Warlayirti Artists was set up, the community went on to become one of Australia's most successful Indigenous art centres. Painting at the centre is a sociable, communal activity, where she was living and working in the 1990s.

Works by Susie Bootja Bootja are held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, She is also represented in major private collections, such as Nangara (also known as the Ebes Collection), the Holmes à Court Collection and the Morven Estate.

Collections Art Gallery of New South Wales Flinders University Art Museum Collection National Gallery of Victoria Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, University of Virginia Holmes à Court collection