Lot 33: BOBBY WEST TJUPURRULA

BORN 1958
UNTITLED 2001

UNTITLED 2001

183 by 152.5 cm

Bears William Mora Aboriginal Art stamp on the reverse

Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

PROVENANCE

Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs
William Mora Aboriginal Art, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne

NOTE

This painting was inspired by the official handing down of the Native Title Determination sought by the Kiwirrkura community at Muyin on 19 October 2001.The people of

Kiwirrkura in Western Australia had been seeking the recognition of their rights to their traditional lands in and around the community since they lodged an application at the

National Native Title Tribunal in 1995

The Honourable Justice French handed down the Court's judgement in the presence of the claimants and the full bench of the Federal Court of Australia, at Muyin as the nearby community of Kiwirrkura had been flooded by the rains of the early wet season. Bobby West had started work on this painting earlier in the year but the impending event encouraged him to finish the painting in time for the handing down of the Court's decision where the painting was displayed as a backdrop

The painting shows a significant part of the land claimed. It depicts a salt lake surrounded by sandhills and the designs associated with the swamp and soakage at Marawa where a group of Tingari Men camped in the Tjukurrpa.The meandering lines down the centre of the painting represent the tracks of a snake which travelled from Mt Wedge, west to Lake Mackay and on to Nyinmi, near Jupiter Well in Western Australia.The rectangular shapes represent the rockholes and soakage water sites in the area.

The artist was also one of the collaborators on the great Kiwirrkura Men's Painting created for the Western Desert Dialysis Appeal in 1999 and illustrated in Perkins, H., Tradition Today: Indigenous Art in Australia,Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2004, p.161

Cf. For an example of a smaller contemporaneous work by the artist see Tingari Men at the rockhole site of Yunala, 2001, in Ryan, J., Land Marks, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2006, p.76, illus

This painting is sold with an accompanying Papunya Tula Artists certificate BW011011