Tingari at Yungalanya, 1978

synthetic polymer paint on canvas board

31 x 61 cm

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Provenance: Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, NT, Cat No. A1781223 Private Collection NSW
Artwork story: This painting portrays a gathering of the Tingari Men at the rockhole site of Yungalanya, located near the Western Australia–Northern Territory border, far to the west of Alice Springs. The Tingari form part of a vast and interconnected body of ancestral narratives that extend across the Western Desert. These traditions hold deep ceremonial and spiritual importance and are regarded as secret-sacred within men’s ceremonial law. While the detailed meanings of Tingari stories, songs, and rituals are restricted to initiated participants, they are broadly understood to recount the travels of ancestral beings who moved across the desert landscape, journeying from one waterhole to another. Accompanied at times by Tingari women and younger initiates, these men created and shaped sacred sites, establishing the foundations of law, custom, and ceremony. Their epic journeys are preserved through extensive song cycles and visual designs, which continue to encode the geography and moral order of country within Pintupi and Western Desert culture.

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c.1927 – 1999

synthetic polymer paint on canvas board

31 x 61 cm

Sold

Provenance: Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, NT, Cat No. A1781223 Private Collection NSW
Artwork story: This painting portrays a gathering of the Tingari Men at the rockhole site of Yungalanya, located near the Western Australia–Northern Territory border, far to the west of Alice Springs. The Tingari form part of a vast and interconnected body of ancestral narratives that extend across the Western Desert. These traditions hold deep ceremonial and spiritual importance and are regarded as secret-sacred within men’s ceremonial law. While the detailed meanings of Tingari stories, songs, and rituals are restricted to initiated participants, they are broadly understood to recount the travels of ancestral beings who moved across the desert landscape, journeying from one waterhole to another. Accompanied at times by Tingari women and younger initiates, these men created and shaped sacred sites, establishing the foundations of law, custom, and ceremony. Their epic journeys are preserved through extensive song cycles and visual designs, which continue to encode the geography and moral order of country within Pintupi and Western Desert culture.