Nina Puruntatameri

Born 1971, Melville Island. Lives and works Pirlangimpi (Garden Point), Melville Island. Tiwi people. Country: Pukulupi, Melville Island (father) and Wadeye (Port Keats) (mother). Skin group: Japijapunga (March Fly). Dance: Kirilima (Jungle Fowl).

Nina (Ludwina) Puruntatameri was born in 1971 and grew up in Paru on Melville Island, the larger of the Tiwi Islands. She lives and works at Pirlangimpi, Melville Island where she is a longtime member of Munupi Arts & Crafts Association. Puruntatameri was taught to paint by her father Romuald Puruntatameri, a celebrated Tiwi artist and senior culture man. Primarily a painter, Nina Puruntatameri also works across a range of other mediums including batik, tunga (bark), stoneware/ceramics and printmaking.

Puruntatameri has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally since 1990 and has been included in the prestigious National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) six times (1993, 1994, 1995, 2007, 2008 and 2013).

Other selected exhibitions include Ngawa Munupula/Ngawa Kiripapiranjuwi: New Paintings from Munupi Art on the Tiwi Islands, Outstation Gallery, Darwin (2015); We are Tiwi: Munupi Arts from Melville Island, Artitja Fine Art, Fremantle (2014); The Tiwi: Art from Jilamara & Munupi Art Centres, Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Virginia, United States;(2014); Nina Puruntatameri & Susan Wanji Wanji, Aboriginal and Pacific Art, Sydney (2011); We Paint the Stories of our Culture, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway (2011); Nina Puruntatameri – New Works, Raft Artspace, Darwin (2007); Mipura Kirimi (Body Painting Designs), Raft Artspace, Darwin (2005); Epama Epam – Everything has Meaning, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Canada (1994); New Tracks, Old Land: Contemporary Prints from Aboriginal Australia, jointly organised by the Aboriginal Arts Management Association, Sydney and Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, touring Australia and the United States (1992–1993); and Stories, Kerava Art Museum, Helsinki and Rovaniemi Art Museum, Lapland, Finland (1993).

Her work is held in numerous public and private collections in Australia and internationally.