Biography

Caroline Nakamarra Gibson was born in 1966 in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 290 km north-west of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. She is the daughter of Nancy Napanangka Gibson, a well-respected artist who also paints with Warlukurlangu Artists. Caroline has one sister, Anita Nakamarra Gibson and three brothers. Caroline attended the local school in Yuendumu but later moved to Nyirripi, an Aboriginal community 160 km north-west of Yuendumu. She is a widow and has two children and three grandkids.

Caroline has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu, since 2007. She paints her father’s dreaming, Ngapa Jukurrpa (Water Dreaming) and Wimpa Jukurrpa (Lightning Dreaming), country located in the ‘tali’ sandhill country of Gibson Desert, south west of Lake McKay. “My mother told me my father’s Jukurrpa.” These stories relate directly to her land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it and have been passed down through the generations for at least 50 millennia.

When she is not painting or looking after her family she attends studies through the Batchelor Institute, Indigenous Tertiary Education.