Lot 94: OLD TUTUMA TJAPANGARTI CIRCA 1915-1987 UNTITLED 1971 54.5 by 25 cm Synthetic polymer paint on artboard Bears artist's name and Stuart Art Centre consignment number on label (distressed) on reverse of frame Provenance: Consignment 2, Painting number

OLD TUTUMA TJAPANGARTI CIRCA 1915-1987 UNTITLED 1971 54.5 by 25 cm Synthetic polymer paint on artboard Bears artist's name and Stuart Art Centre consignment number on label (distressed) on reverse of frame Provenance: Consignment 2, Painting number 50 to the Stuart Art Centre, Alice Springs Collection of Colin Jack Hinton Sotheby's Important Aboriginal Art, 26 June 1997, lot 226 Private collection, Victoria Old Tutama Tjapangati's work is first recorded in the second consignment of paintings to the Stuart Art Centre, making this painting possibly his first and certainly one from the first group of works by the artist. R.G Kimber writes with regard to the artist and this painting: 'The artist was a remarkable hard-as-nails senior man, still known as Tutuma rather than Old Tutuma, when I first met him in c.1974. His traditional country included key sites in the vicinity of Docker River, in the far south west of the Northern Territory and north in the general Northern Territory - Western Australian border country. Although sometimes identified as a Ptjantjatjarra man, he was considered a Winanpa (effectively southern Pintupi) kinsman by a number of other senior men who lived at Papunya in the 1970s. The painting is almost certainly of Tingari association, with the various sets of concentric circles referring to camps of men involved in ritual business. Assuming this interpretation to be correct, the smaller sets of circles indicate the more minor camps as men prepare for ceremonies, whilst the larger circles indicate that they all came together from time to time to perform the very strict men-only ceremonies. The linking bar lines indicate that all of the men were united in one purpose, meeting to discuss and plan the ceremonies, then travelling in associated groups over the Tingari landscape.'