Inulputja, near Jupiter Well, 1993

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

90 x 60 cm

Est. $6,000 – $8,000

Hammer $4,400

Provenance: Warlayirti Artists, Balgo Hills, WA, Cat No. 514/93 Cooee Art, Sydney, NSW
Exhibited: The Art of Balgo Hills, Cooee Art, Sydney, NSW, 1993.
Artwork story: Inulputja lies near Jupiter Well, deep in the country Wimmitji Tjapangarti walked as a young man before following his family into Balgo Mission in 1957. This work records his memory of that country: its sandy rises, craggy hills, dry creek beds and the permanent water soakages that sustained life for thousands of years, the most reliable of which is called Nardu Diiti. The surface is built up with layered, clotted marks in a palette that moves beyond the basic earth tones he typically favoured, into bold blues, greens and oranges. This is among his last works. The catalogue number 514/93 places it in 1993, by which time his eyesight was failing. Wimmitji was born around 1924 at Kutakurtal, near Nyirla. He came to Balgo as a fully initiated man, a mapan of the Wangkajunga, a traditional healer of extensive ceremonial knowledge. In his sixties he began painting alongside his second wife Eubena Nampitjin, and together they developed a shared aesthetic that stood apart from their Balgo contemporaries, more refined, more detailed, more intimate with the country it described. Despite speaking little English, his knowledge of ancestral narrative proved invaluable to anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt in the preparation of The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia (Penguin, 1988), and to Father Anthony Peile in compiling the Kukatja dictionary.

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Sale 3 · Lot 2

Wimmitji Tjapangati

c.1924 – 2000

Region: Western Desert
Community: Wirrimanu (Balgo)
Language group: Kukatja

Inulputja, near Jupiter Well, 1993

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

90 x 60 cm

Est. $6,000 – $8,000

Hammer $4,400

Provenance: Warlayirti Artists, Balgo Hills, WA, Cat No. 514/93 Cooee Art, Sydney, NSW
Exhibited: The Art of Balgo Hills, Cooee Art, Sydney, NSW, 1993.
Artwork story: Inulputja lies near Jupiter Well, deep in the country Wimmitji Tjapangarti walked as a young man before following his family into Balgo Mission in 1957. This work records his memory of that country: its sandy rises, craggy hills, dry creek beds and the permanent water soakages that sustained life for thousands of years, the most reliable of which is called Nardu Diiti. The surface is built up with layered, clotted marks in a palette that moves beyond the basic earth tones he typically favoured, into bold blues, greens and oranges. This is among his last works. The catalogue number 514/93 places it in 1993, by which time his eyesight was failing. Wimmitji was born around 1924 at Kutakurtal, near Nyirla. He came to Balgo as a fully initiated man, a mapan of the Wangkajunga, a traditional healer of extensive ceremonial knowledge. In his sixties he began painting alongside his second wife Eubena Nampitjin, and together they developed a shared aesthetic that stood apart from their Balgo contemporaries, more refined, more detailed, more intimate with the country it described. Despite speaking little English, his knowledge of ancestral narrative proved invaluable to anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt in the preparation of The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia (Penguin, 1988), and to Father Anthony Peile in compiling the Kukatja dictionary.