Kitty Kantilla

Kitty Kantilla also known as Kutuwalumi Purawarrumpatu (c. 1928 – 4 October 2003) was a renowned aboriginal artist from the Tiwi Islands of the Northern Territory of Australia.

She worked in a variety of media, including carved ironwood sculptures, tunga (bark baskets), painting on paper, canvas and prints.

She grew up traditionally, eating the abundant bush foods local to the area, living under paperbark shelters and speaking 'old' Tiwi.

For a time she moved to nearby Bathurst Island to live in her mother's country where she began work as an artist, mostly carving tutini (grave poles) and figures, but in 1970 she moved again to Paru on Melville Island where she would go on to join a group of women who sold their art at Nguiu.

[1] Kantilla's artistic work appears to have begun with her creation of figurative carvings of ironwood while living in Paru on Melville Island after the death of her husband in 1968.

[2]In the late-1980s Kantilla moved back to Melville Island, living at Milikapiti where she began to produce her more contemporary work.