Dianne Ungukalpi Golding

Dianne Ungukalpi Golding is an artist belonging to the Ngaanyatjarra language and cultural group, and lives in the remote community of Warakurna in Western Australia with her family.

Dianne has made baskets for a number of years and first learnt from relatives in Warakurna. She enjoys experimenting with different shapes and says: “Some long like piti (traditional wood dish), some round like the Sun.” She has since made a number of sculptural pieces drawing inspiration from the animals prevalent on the Ngaanyatjarra Lands, whether they be papas (the camp dogs in the community) or tinkas (goannas), tjilkamarta (echidna), or rabbits hunted out bush.

Dianne exhibited her first sculptural piece, a large kamula (camel), at Desert Mob 2006 in Mparntwe (Alice Springs) in the Northern Territory. She has then exhibited her fibre artwork with Tjanpi Desert Weavers every year since 2012. Notable amongst these exhibitions is String Theory at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, NSW, in 2013; Desert Mob 2015 and 2016 in Mparntwe, NT; Flight at FORM Gallery in Perth, WA, in 2017; the Biennale of Australian Art in Ballarat, VIC, in 2019; and Revealed: Emerging Indigenous Artists of WA at the Fremantle Arts Centre in Fremantle, WA in 2018 and 2020.

Dianne’s Helicopter and Camels sculptures exhibited at Flight were later acquired by the state collection held by the Western Australian Museum. This delightful and humorous piece depicts the story of Ngaanyatjarra Senior Man and Ranger, Mr Bennett, mustering camels out of Warakurna community.

In 2020, Dianne was involved in the collaborative sculptural piece Kungkarangkalpa : Seven Sisters, commissioned for the National Gallery of Australia’s Know My Name: Australian Women Artists: 1900 to Now. This large-scale installation tells the ancestral story of the Seven Sisters Dreaming, using sculptural forms woven from materials including tjanpi and raffia. Also in 2020, she worked on a family collaborative piece with her sister, daughter-in-law and granddaughter titled Pitja Nyawa Kulila Pampula (Come, Look, Listen, Touch), an immersive work created for the three-year national travelling exhibition Tension(s): Tamworth Textile Triennial.

Most recently in 2022, she has exhibited internationally as part of Punu Pukurlpa at Deletaille Gallery in Brussels, Belgium.

Dianne was awarded the Blue Thumb Art Prize in 2020 for her sculpture ‘Young Mother with Sick Baby’, and the Hedland Art Award in 2017. Her work has been acquired by the National Gallery of Australia, the National Museum of Australiana and the Western Australian Museum.

Dianne is also an experienced carver with Maruku Arts and an exhibited painter with Warakurna Arts.

Dianne is a kind, feisty and intensely funny woman who has overcome extreme odds to become a highly successful artist and an inspiration to her family and community.