Tjulpuntjulpunpa - Desert Wildflowers, 2021

synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen

195 x 198 cm

Est. $6,000 – $8,000

Hammer $5,700

Provenance: Kaltjiti Arts, Fregon, NT, Cat No.114-21KA Private Collection, Vic
Artwork story: The desert wildflowers of the APY Lands bloom after rain in colours that seem improbable against the red earth — violet, magenta, cerulean, pale yellow — and Tjulpuntjulpunpa captures exactly that improbability. Across a near-square canvas of close to two metres, spiralling flower-heads, seed pods, and curling tendrils surge outward from a single centre, the dot-work so fine and sustained that the surface vibrates. The subject belongs to a tradition Kathy Maringka helped establish. Where many artists of her generation at Kaltjiti Arts on the APY Lands depict Tjukurpa directly, Maringka developed imagery grounded in the living landscape: the colours and forms of flowering desert plants, the light of open sky and ochre country. Her practice grew from the Fregon craft room in the 1970s, learning batik and acrylic techniques within the tradition of walka, the patterned visual language first developed by Kaltjiti women in weaving, carrying meaning through layered mark-making rather than direct narrative. Her daughter Gladys Roberts came to painting through her mother's encouragement, beginning at Kaltjiti Arts in 2013, and has developed a practice that takes Kathy's approach into a more charged and abstract register. In this collaboration the two sensibilities are fully present: the quiet authority of Kathy's long experience moving through the composition alongside Gladys's denser fields of dotting in violet, magenta, and indigo. The scale reinforces it. At this size Tjulpuntjulpunpa commands a room, and what it generates is something neither practice produces alone.

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Sale 3 · Lot 46

Kathy Maringka

b. c.1954

Region: APY Lands
Community: Pukatja (Ernabella)
Language group: Pitjantjatjara

Tjulpuntjulpunpa - Desert Wildflowers, 2021

synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen

195 x 198 cm

Est. $6,000 – $8,000

Hammer $5,700

Provenance: Kaltjiti Arts, Fregon, NT, Cat No.114-21KA Private Collection, Vic
Artwork story: The desert wildflowers of the APY Lands bloom after rain in colours that seem improbable against the red earth — violet, magenta, cerulean, pale yellow — and Tjulpuntjulpunpa captures exactly that improbability. Across a near-square canvas of close to two metres, spiralling flower-heads, seed pods, and curling tendrils surge outward from a single centre, the dot-work so fine and sustained that the surface vibrates. The subject belongs to a tradition Kathy Maringka helped establish. Where many artists of her generation at Kaltjiti Arts on the APY Lands depict Tjukurpa directly, Maringka developed imagery grounded in the living landscape: the colours and forms of flowering desert plants, the light of open sky and ochre country. Her practice grew from the Fregon craft room in the 1970s, learning batik and acrylic techniques within the tradition of walka, the patterned visual language first developed by Kaltjiti women in weaving, carrying meaning through layered mark-making rather than direct narrative. Her daughter Gladys Roberts came to painting through her mother's encouragement, beginning at Kaltjiti Arts in 2013, and has developed a practice that takes Kathy's approach into a more charged and abstract register. In this collaboration the two sensibilities are fully present: the quiet authority of Kathy's long experience moving through the composition alongside Gladys's denser fields of dotting in violet, magenta, and indigo. The scale reinforces it. At this size Tjulpuntjulpunpa commands a room, and what it generates is something neither practice produces alone.