Women's Ceremony (shield) and Possum Trail at Napperby (woomera), 1992

synthetic polymer paint on bean wood

65 x 20 cm (shield); 86 x 11 cm (woomera)

Est. $5,000 – $7,000

Hammer $6,500

Provenance: The Blythman Collection
Artwork story: Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri began carving before he began painting. Born around 1932 in a creekbed on Napperby Station approximately 200 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, he worked from late boyhood as a stockman across Central Australia, acquiring along the way six Western Desert languages and a reputation as a skilled woodcarver. When the painting movement began at Papunya in 1971, it was a man already accomplished with his hands who joined Papunya Tula Artists in February 1972 and became one of its founding directors. These two objects belong to the older of his two practices. The shield, broad and oval in form, carries a field of dense dotting in white, blue-grey, ochre and brown, with three concentric circle waterholes running along its central axis and a sinuous line moving between them. The woomera is narrower and more elongated, the natural grain of the bean wood visible at the edges, its decorated surface carrying three concentric circles connected by a dotted line, with stars at intervals. Both are signed on the verso in the artist's own hand. The inscription on the shield reads Women's Ceremony; on the woomera, Possum Trail at Napperby — his birth country. In 1988 the Institute of Contemporary Art in London organised a retrospective of his work, the first time an Australian Aboriginal artist had been honoured in this way by the international art world. In 2002 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service as a pioneer of the Western Desert art movement. He died in Alice Springs that same year.

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Sale 3 · Lot 60

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri

c.1932 – 2002

Region: Western Desert
Community: Papunya
Language group: Anmatyerr (Anmatyerre)

Women's Ceremony (shield) and Possum Trail at Napperby (woomera), 1992

synthetic polymer paint on bean wood

65 x 20 cm (shield); 86 x 11 cm (woomera)

Est. $5,000 – $7,000

Hammer $6,500

Provenance: The Blythman Collection
Artwork story: Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri began carving before he began painting. Born around 1932 in a creekbed on Napperby Station approximately 200 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, he worked from late boyhood as a stockman across Central Australia, acquiring along the way six Western Desert languages and a reputation as a skilled woodcarver. When the painting movement began at Papunya in 1971, it was a man already accomplished with his hands who joined Papunya Tula Artists in February 1972 and became one of its founding directors. These two objects belong to the older of his two practices. The shield, broad and oval in form, carries a field of dense dotting in white, blue-grey, ochre and brown, with three concentric circle waterholes running along its central axis and a sinuous line moving between them. The woomera is narrower and more elongated, the natural grain of the bean wood visible at the edges, its decorated surface carrying three concentric circles connected by a dotted line, with stars at intervals. Both are signed on the verso in the artist's own hand. The inscription on the shield reads Women's Ceremony; on the woomera, Possum Trail at Napperby — his birth country. In 1988 the Institute of Contemporary Art in London organised a retrospective of his work, the first time an Australian Aboriginal artist had been honoured in this way by the international art world. In 2002 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service as a pioneer of the Western Desert art movement. He died in Alice Springs that same year.