Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi circa 1920-1987 RUMIYA TJUKURRPA (1979) synthetic polymer paint on linen 90 X 75CM PROVENANCE Painted at Papunya, Northern Territory (1979) Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs Private Collection, New South Wales PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, NEW SOUTH WALES
Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi circa 1920-1987 BIG CAVE STORY (1972) synthetic polymer paint on composition board 46.1 X 36.9CM PROVENANCE Painted at Papunya, Northern Territory Stuart Art Centre, Alice Springs (stock 12018) The Gavin and Elspeth Seagrim Collection, Canberra By descent LITERATURE Bardon, Geoffrey and James Bardon, Papunya: A Place Made After the Story, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2004, p. 445 (annotated diagram) This painting is sold with the original Stuart Art Centre documentation. I first met Professor Gavin Seagrim as a science undergraduate studying psychology at the Australian National University, Canberra. An inspirational lecturer, he was passionate about the nature of creativity and the ground breaking insights on child development that were formulated by visionary Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. I was introduced to Elspeth Seagrim, a medical practioner later when visiting the family home in Forest in Canberra at an informal student gathering. Several years later I befriended the daughter, Alison Rickert, like me an ANU student. It was in May 2011, following the death of her mother, that Alison first contacted me about The Gavin and Elspeth Seagrim Collection of Aboriginal Art. The Gavin and Elspeth Seagrim Collection was acquired in the early 1970s during their respective visits of Professor Gavin Seagrim and Elspeth Seagrim to the Northern Territory. Elspeth Seagrim worked for the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Health and in that capacity she travelled all over Australia and Professor Gavin Seagrim, was a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the Australian National University. He was undertaking research for his publication Furnishing the Mind: A Comparative Study of Cognitive Development in Central Australian Aborigines. (1) The research compared the development of reasoning on Piagetian tasks of Aranda and Loritja children raised at the Hermannsberg Mission with that of Aboriginal children raised in a variety of different backgrounds…' . There were three groups of children, those traditionally raised, those educated in a mission environment and others in Alice Springs who attended a mixed race school. The outcomes of the research were remarkable with those raised traditionally demonstrating results that had little resemblance to those of European children, but who as adults were completely competent human beings, having 'used and created complex and sophisticated languages' …and managing ' ...to successfully live and thrive on every square metre of the difficult part of the continent of Australia,' … where 'no one has since managed to do the latter without the application of significant modern technology'. (2) The conclusion of the study was that the learning problems experienced by Aboriginal children were caused by the inappropriate design of education programs by the European school system, and that the same children as adults achieved the same autonomy and competency as non Aboriginal individuals, but arrived there through different cognitive routes. For his knowledge on the traditions of the Aranda people, Seagrim drew on the research of early anthropologists Baldwin Spencer and Francis Gillen and in particular the investigations of Theodor George Henry Strehlow, who had spent over 40 years studying the Aranda at Hermannsberg. For background to the Warlpiri people he drew on M.J. Meggitt's work at Hooker Creek and Yuendumu. (3) For more general aspects on Aboriginal life he drew on the publications of Ronald and Catherine Berndt and other historical, educational, anthropological and psychological academic papers. Furnishing the Mind: A Comparative Study of Cognitive Development in Central Australian Aborigines was dedicated to 'the Aboriginal children of Central Australia in whose hands will largely rest the future of what remains of traditional Aboriginal life'. The royalties of the book are paid to 'the Finke River Mission at Hermannsberg as a contribution to the secular education of the children'. (4) That his love of Aboriginal art was initiated as a matter of curiosity and a recognition of a unique artistic expression that became a lifelong interest is reflected in the correspondence of Alison Seagrim with his former colleague Robyn Garnett who worked with him in the desert. She writes of Professor Seagrim: 'Professor Seagrim used to visit me to review my work once or twice a year. One year, I think it was 1973, he brought a Swiss colleague with him who was very interested in Aboriginal art. They often visited my family's house in Aldridge Street (Alice Springs) and one evening we three walked round the corner to the caravan park on Larapinta Drive which was owned by Pat Hogan. In the foyer of the caravan park, we noticed paintings from Papunya that Pat had put on display for sale. Professor Seagrim and his colleague were fascinated by them and each bought several paintings…Gavin took a great interest in the way that Aboriginal people represented reality. He was fascinated by the aerial perspective shown in the Papunya paintings, and noted that even 5 year olds at Ernabella made crayon and sand drawings of their wiltjas as seen from above…He was always very interested in the way that Aboriginal people portrayed their world through drawings. The legacy of the Gavin and Elspeth Collection of Aboriginal Art, as reflected in the lives of Gavin and Elspeth Seagrim and their daughter Alison Rickert is a remarkably humanitarian and inspirational one. Alison has pledged to donate a portion of the proceeds to a trust to promote cultural recovery for Aboriginal people in Australia. Marie Geissler (1) Gavin Seagrim and Robin J. Lendon, Furnishing the Mind: A Comparative Study of Cognitive Development in Central Australian Aborigines, Academic Press, Sydney,1980, p.viii (2) op. cit, Seagrim and Lendon: 1980, p. 22-3 (3) op. cit, Seagrim and Lendon: 1980, p. v (4) op. cit, Seagrim and Lendon: 1980, see Index Despite his stature, Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi stood out among his peers. I first met Lungkata in 1977. His goatee was formed into beads with red ochre and he was wearing a cobalt-blue satin 'cowboy' shirt, secured with mother of pearl press-studs. He had recently returned from exacting ceremonies in Pitjantjatjara country to the south. Lungkata spoke softly and insistently in Pintupi, maintaining direct eye contact. He never learned English despite having lived in contact with Europeans for more than 30 years. (1) I later discovered that he was a powerful Ngangkari or traditional healer, esteemed as a 'doctor' by his countrymen. However and in equal measure he was feared as a sorcerer by the Arrernte and Luritja of the MacDonnell Ranges on whose country the Pintupi were tenuously perched. More than once I witnessed Lungkata stripped to his briefs, prancing on his toes in front of the Papunya general store; like an angered faun he rattled spears with one hand and waived a woomera threateningly with the other. Although he was already in his early sixties he was fit and dangerous. Lungkata's challenge was taken very seriously, for although his country lay far to the west, no one questioned his authority. Unlike other Ngangkari, who rubbed and sucked their patients, Lungkata would draw sharp-ended elliptical boards from the bodies of those in his care. Such was his confidence that he would conjure these objects in public. One memorable occasion, while I was conducting the Annual General Meeting of Papunya Tula Artists, with 30 Indigenous shareholders and an Alice Springs accountant from in attendance, Lungkata operated at the back of the assembly, removing several small boards from the soft flesh above the collarbone of a fellow artist. The contrast between the banal exercise of corporate governance and the super-natural was bizarre to say the least. Lungkata's paintings are instantly recognizable. While Western Desert artists are renowned for presenting a flattened out, 'birds-eye view' of country, Lungkata projects a convex almost parabolic perspective in which his lines and billowing curves tend towards infinity. While his works refer to the land and its creation, they can also be read as 'inscapes' that map metaphysical contours of the artist's experience. The current painting, Big Cave Story 1972 is characteristic of Lungkata at his best-intense and focused, like the man himself. Paradoxically Big Cave Story is a relatively small work and as with many pictures of the period it is painted with a mixture of traditional and European paints on recycled composition board. Though it is a distinctive and unique creation, Big Cave Story 1972 shares many of its qualities with the first flush of paintings that emerged from Papunya in 1971-1972. This extraordinary inflorescence of creativity from Papunya was the focus of Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art presented by the National Gallery of Victoria in 2011-2012 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the birth of the movement. Tjukurrtjanu included 3 walls of Lungkata's work offering an unprecedented opportunity to trace his development from 'Law man' and Ngangkari to become an accomplished artist with a distinctive and poetic voice. (2) As is often the case with the documentation of early Papunya paintings, Geoff Bardon's notes for a Big Cave Story 1972 are sparse. (3) There is no mention of the name of the site or the Dreaming celebrated. That deficiency aside, the documentation provides useful clues for a topographical reading of the work. The original Stuart Arts Centre certificate reveals that the paintings dominant forms (the large U-shapes) refer to caves, arranged on either side of an 'old corrobboree man lying down'. Short sinuous lines denote 'running water' that moves from a 'cave' towards a series of connected waterholes. A claypan is shown, embedded in the uppermost 'U-shape. So imagine the area depicted as a small rocky outcrop or escarpment set within a sea of dunes. The faint smell of fresh water rises from a chain of small waterholes fed from the rock's impervious surface. The cool dark of a shallow cave punctuates the red stone. Bleaching light floods a nearby claypan, its perfect flatness is known to fill with a shallow lens of sweet water for a few days after a downpour. The convergence of such rare environments in an otherwise harsh environment offered a variety of life-giving resources within the vastness of Lungkata's country. To outsiders from wetter climates, such places seem harsh and forbidding, but to the Pintupi they are sites of abundance and meaning, the focus of life, particularly in the days and weeks after rain. Lungkata lived in the desert through his youth and into manhood before contacting Europeans, so the unnamed site he portrays in Big Cave Story would have been redolent with memories of family. (4) His father, grandfather and uncles would have revealed the mythic origins of each geological feature. For it is through the actions of the Creative Ancestors of the Tjukurrpa (Dreaming) that the land is believed to have been formed, and it is through the rock features, water holes and claypans of the contemporary environment that the actions of the ancestors can be read. Tjukurrpa is celebrated in ceremony, and Lungkata was a famous dancer. So at another level Big Cave Story 1972 can be understood as an expression of the performance of ceremonies associated with this unnamed site. The broad marks that encompass Big Cave Story 1972 evoke Pintupi body paint. The strength of gesture and the assurance of the infill approximate the decoration applied to the chest and abdomen of a dancer. At their deepest level these symbols represent encoded secrets of the site and associated Tjukurrpa. It is worth considering the possibility of another tier of meaning in which the 'caves' may refer to male figures, for U-shapes conventionally refer to a seated figure in Western Desert iconography, and Lungkata was the custodian of the Wati Kutjarra (Two Men) Tjukurrpa, a story that would be compatible with this reading (5). The powerful but relaxed symmetry of Big Cave Story 1972 resembles one of Lungkata's best-known paintings, Women's Dreaming 1972, now in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney. The two boards have major iconographic elements in common, though they would seem to relate to separate realms. Such comparisons reveal that in Western Desert art the same iconographic element can refer to more than one type of object/actor, according to context. The U-shape symbol that refers to the women in Women's Dreaming takes on a masculine reference when associated with the body of the 'old corroboree man lying down' in Big Cave Story 1972. Allowing for a multi-leveled interpretation of is one means of appreciating the mercurial depth of the best Western Desert art. While painting an artist such as Lungkata would glide from one level to another; at one moment recalling the topographic features of the site, overlaid with the recollection of family members with whom the place was experienced, then be propelled by verses associated with the songline that passed through the country, reliving the ceremony that celebrates the site. The Papunya Men's Painting Room of 1971-1972 reverberated with the songs of at least twenty Pintupi artists, who through the act of painting were able to conjure an intimate association with a particular place, while being physically distant from their ancestral land. Big Cave Story 1972 reverberates with the intensity of that moment 40 years ago at the genesis of contemporary Western Desert art. John Kean (1) John Kean, "Getting back to country, Painting and the outstation movement 1977-79", in Hetty Perkins & Fink (eds.), Papunya Tula, Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2000, p. 221 (2) Judith Ryan & Philip Batty (eds.), Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2011, pp. 224-41. (3) Fred Myers, Graceful Transfigurations of Person, Place, and Story: The Stylistic Evolution of Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, in Roger Benjamin & Andrew Weislogel (eds), Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya, Cornell University Press, New York, 2009, p. 54 (4) Fred Myers, Pintupi country, Pintupi self: Place and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC and Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1986. pp. 79-89 (Maantja was the name that Lungkata Tjungurrayi was known by before he came into Haasts Bluff, circa 1948) (5) Fred Myers, Graceful Transfigurations of Person, Place, and Story: The Stylistic Evolution of Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, in Roger Benjamin & Andrew Weislogel (eds), Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya, Cornell University Press, New York, 2009, p. 54
Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi circa 1920-1987 WOMEN'S STORY (1973) synthetic polymer paint on composition board 57 X 43.5CM PROVENANCE Painted at Yai Yai, Northern Territory Bruno Scrobogna, Germany Private Collection Melbourne Fine Aboriginal Art, Deutscher-Menzies, Melbourne, 27-29 June 2000, lot 31, illustrated Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne Private Collection, Melbourne This painting is based around the circular radiating pattern often found in the sand mosaics which were common practice of the Pintupi men prior to 1970. Interestingly Shorty Lungkata has used signifcantly variable colour along with traditional colour variations. Geoffrey Bardon suggested that the corner roundels at the top of the design could depict ceremonial men, fire or a sand mosaic. The bottom right roundel is signifacantly different for unknown reasons. The linear patterns came form the sand mosaic tradition and ceremonial body paint design which has its origins at Papunya. This painting was acquired directly from the artist by film maker and writer Bruno Scrobogna. D'lan Davidson LITERATURE Bruno Scrobogna, Die Pintubi Am Ende der Steinzeit, Verlag Ullstein GmbH, Berlin, 1980, pp.44-45, (illustrated)
SHORTY LUNGKATA TJUNGURRAYI (CIRCA 1920 - 1987) Tingari Men, circa 1978 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 163 x 47 cm Provenance: Private Collection, NSW Purchased from the Papunya exhibition held at the University of New South Wales to raise money for Aboriginal Scholarships during the late 1970's.
SHORTY LUNGKATA TJUNGURRAYI (CIRCA 1914 - 1987) Sacred Ancestral Journey, 1973 synthetic polymer paint on composition board 79 x 61 cm Provenance: Private Collection, Vic Purchased in 1973 at Papunya Tula Artists by the original owner, who was the director/manager of Aboriginal Arts & Crafts, Adelaide between 1975 and 1983. The label verso bears the artist's name, area (Papunya), date of execution (1972-3) and reads, 'The story forms part of a cycle of sacred ancestral journey and few specific details were recorded, concentric circles mark site where women made camp for the men along the Docker River heading for main camp.'
[ AUSTRALIAN / ABORIGINAL ART ] SHORTY LUNGKATA TJUNGURRAYI (CIRCA 1914 - 1987) Tingari Men at Intirinynga, 1977 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 46 x 165 cm E22000-26000 Provenance: Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, Alice Springs. Catalogue Number SL77805 Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings, VIC. Catalogue Number AGOD6928. Private Collection, England A large group of men are gathered for ceremonial events associated with initiation of young men into tribal law. The two large circles at either end of the painting are the ceremonial areas. The large central circle is the rockhole Intirinynga, the site of the ceremony. Smaller circles represent the various men's camps and the interconnecting lines are the paths they follow during the ritual. Background dots represent sleeping men (red), ceremonial objects(black surrounded by a single row of white dots) and weapons (boomerangs, woomeras, spears and shields).
SHORTY LUNGKATA TJUNGURRAYI CIRCA 1920-1987 UNTITLED 1972 50.5 by 35 5 cm Synthetic polymer paint and natural earth pigments on composition board Provenance: Painted at Papunya in 1972 Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne Literature: Diggins L. et al, A Myriad of Dreamings, Twentieth Century Aboriginal Art, Malakoff Fine Art Press, Melbourne, 1989 illus p.47, pl.44 Exhibited: A Myriad of Dreamings, Twentieth Century, Aboriginal Art, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art at Westpac Gallery, Victorian Arts Centre Melbourne, 5 - 22 October 1989, catalogue number 56, label on reverse of frame Cf. Untitled, 1972, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, illustrated in Perkins, H. and H. Fink, Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2000, 47. An unusual example of the artist's work where he has created an atmospheric effect more prevalent in the work of some of his contemporaries. The thick white dots of varying size that overlay the surface of this painting produce a highly tactile patchwork where the sets of concentric circles are allowed to stand out against the background. The circles represent specific places and camps in the artist's country in the Gibson Desert. Shorty Lungkata was one of the last artists to join the Papunya painting group in 1971-72. At this time he was regarded as one of the senior Pintupi ritual men at Papunya, a great dancer and hunter. In his early work the artist experimented with a variety of styles, from plain linear images to more complex, atmospheric compositions that feature layers of dotting He also used a wide range of the conventional desert iconography. He is renowned for having produced some of the finest paintings at Papunya in the 1970s.
![[ AUSTRALIAN / ABORIGINAL ART ] SHORTY LUNGKATA TJUNGURRAYI (CIRCA 1914 - 1987) Tingari Men at Intirinynga, 1977 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 46 x 165 cm E22000-26000 Provenance: Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, Alice Springs. Catalogue Number](https://stageimg.invaluable.com/housePhotos/Lawsons/68/257368/H0669-L10825052.jpg)
