Artist

Revered artist, traditional custodian of the significant site of Antara and respected ngangkari (traditional healer), Betty Kuntiwa Pumani is one of Australia's most distinctive and sophisticated painters, renowned for her breathtaking large-scale compositions and refined palette. 

Pumani paints her mother's Country, Antara, a significant ceremonial site sacred to the Anangu people of the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara language groups. She is a traditional custodian of Antara, as were her late mother, Kunmanara Milatjari Pumani, and sister, Kunmanara Ngupulya Pumani, both renowned artists and important cultural custodians.

Pumani's serpentine compositions of vibrant reds, stippled whites and cobalt blues capture the scale and splendour of the Antara landscape, of imposing red granite, blue skies and waterholes, and fields of white tobacco flowers. Beyond the physical landscape, her work also carries deeper resonances of Country, among them the maku (witchetty grub) Tjukurpa.

Pumani's extraordinary rise in the Australian contemporary art world has been well recognised, with successive wins of the General Painting Award at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in 2015 and 2016, and awarded the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2017 and the Len Fox Painting Award at Castlemaine Art Museum, Victoria in 2019. In 2021, she presented a major commission at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney, for The National 2021: New Australian Art — a ten-metre work, the largest of her career, created over five months during lockdown and later acquired into the MCA's permanent collection.

In 2025, Pumani was the subject of the major survey exhibition Betty Kuntiwa Pumani: maḻatja-maḻatja (those who come after) at Bundanon Art Museum, NSW, curated by Rachel Kent and accompanied by a significant publication. 

Pumani has presented seven solo exhibitions at Alcaston Gallery and has been represented by the gallery at Sydney Contemporary every year since 2017. Her works are held in public and private collections across Australia and internationally, including the Aboriginal Art Museum, Utrecht, Netherlands; Artbank, Australia; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria; Castlemaine Art Museum, Victoria; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra; Kaplan and Levi Collection, Seattle, USA and private collections.

© The Artist, Mimili Maku Arts and Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne

For an extended CV, please contact Alcaston Gallery at art@alcastongallery.com.au