Lot 93: ANATJARI TJAMPITJINPA CIRCA 1927-1999

TINGARI CEREMONIES AT KIWIRRKURA 1985

MEASUREMENTS

122 by 122 cm

Bears artist's name, size and Papunya Tula Artists catalogue number AT850660 on the reverse
Synthetic polymer paint on linen

PROVENANCE
Painted at Kiwirrkura in June 1995 Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs Private collection, Brisbane
LITERATURE
For an extensive discussion of the artist's early paintings see Bardon, G. and J. Bardon, Papunya, A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2004. See also: Caruana, W., Aboriginal Art, World of Art Series, Thames and Hudson, London and New York, 2003; and Perkins, H. and H. Fink (eds.), Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales in association with Papunya Tula Artists, Sydney, 2000 Cf. 'Ceremonial Gound at Kulkuta', 1981, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, illustrated in Caruana 2003, p.122, plate 103, and Perkins and Fink, 2000, p.107 A classical early 1980s Pintupi painting which features roundels and joining lines at the exclusion of other desert iconography such as the U-shapes denoting people and animal or human tracks. The early 1980s was a period in which Pintupi artists refined their imagery to include only the basic icons such as concentric circles joined by lines representing ancestral paths of travel. Most, if not all of these paintings of the era refer to the landscape and activities of the ancestral beings known as the Tingari. The paring down of imagery to the point where it becomes minimal in European terms, served to reflect the esoteric and highly sacred/secret nature of the creative events for which the Tingari are responsible. The paintings became highly conceptualised and formal maps of the landscape which the Tingari had created. This style adopted by the Pintupi was the precursor of the paintings of the 1990s and later which tend to dispense with the traditional desert iconography altogether, including the roundels, and instead feature repeated lines constructed of dots or repeated shapes as seen in the work of George and Willy Tjungurrayi among several others Anatjari's 'Ceremonial ground at Kulkuta', 1981, is considered to be the seminal work in the transition in Pintupi imagery in the early 1980s. 'Tingari ceremonies at Kiwirrkura', 1985, depicts ceremonies at this site in Western Australia, to the west of the Pintupi community of Kintore. The roundels in the painting represent a large group of men who travelled through this site heading east to Papunya itself. A settlement was established at Kiwirrkura by the Pintupi in 1983 This painting is sold with an accompanying Papunya Tula Artists certificate