Kitty Kantilla


Kitty Kantilla also known as Kutuwalumi Purawarrumpatu or Mary Campion was a renowned Aboriginal artist from the Tiwi Islands of the Northern Territory of Australia; she was a Tiwi woman. She worked in a variety of media, including carved ironwood sculptures, tunga, painting on paper, canvas and prints. Her work is held in collections around Australia.

Early life

Kantilla was born on at Piripumawu on the eastern coast of Melville Island (Yermalner). She grew up on Yimpinari country traditionally eating the abundant bush foods local to the area, living under paperbark shelters and speaking 'old' Tiwi. She lived at Paru on Melville Island, which she preferred as it was her mother's country. She temporarily moved to the mission on Bathurst Island after the Japanese bombings of the Tiwi Islands in 1941. She later returned to Paru, where a number of artists were based. Those artists travelled by canoe or swam to Wurrumiyanga to sell their work.
For a time she moved to nearby Bathurst Island where she began work as an artist, mostly carving tutini and figures, but in 1970 she moved again to Paru where she would go on to join a group of women artists, known as the Paru Women, who sold their art at Nguyu at the Tiwi Pima established in 1976. During this period of her life she mainly produced carvings, but around 1985 she would move once more to Milikapiti, a nearby settlement, where she began to produce paintings.

Artworks

Kantilla's artistic work appears to have begun, after the death of her husband in 1968, with her creation of figurative carvings of ironwood influenced by Tiwi ceremonial contexts while living in Paru. In describing her work from this period Kantilla said:
In the late-1980s Kantilla moved back to Melville Island, living at Milikapiti where she began to produce her more contemporary work.
She produced most of her work through the new Jilamara Arts and Craft Association which was established in 1989. Her early works were on bark but she later painted on canvas.She quickly became one of its leading artists, where she was known as "Dot Dot" or the "Queen of Jilamara". She had her first solo show at Aboriginal and South Pacific Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney in 1994.
In 1995 started working with printmaking techniques, which was far different to the work that she had done thus far. She found that, in using this new medium, she was able to think out her ideas afresh and differed significantly from her earlier works. Kantilla's prints were long and narrow and generally composed of fine and freely drawn lines.
Before her death in 2003 her work had been exhibited in major exhibitions such as Pumpuni Jilamara: Tiwi Art at the Art Gallery of [New South Wales] in 2002, Beyond the Pale at the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2000 and at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Her works are held widely in the collections of major art galleries around Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum Victoria and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.

Exhibitions

Kantilla's work was cited as an important influence on the work of the Australian ceramic artist Pippin Drysdale.