Tingari at Yungalanya, 1978

synthetic polymer paint on canvas board

61 x 31 cm; 73 x 43 cm (framed)

Est. $2,000 – $3,000

Hammer $6,500

Provenance: Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, Alice Springs, NT, Cat No. A1781223 Private Collection, NSW Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd
Artwork story: Yungalanya is a group of rockholes far to the west of Alice Springs, near the Western Australia and Northern Territory border. The Papunya Tula Artists certificate for this work, signed in January 1979, records the composition with cartographic precision: the larger concentric circles indicate the most significant waterplaces at the site, the smaller circles the lesser rockholes, the interconnecting lines a creekbed, and the enclosed areas between them the camps of the Tingari men. The bands of dots that fill the surrounding ground represent the bush foods eaten by the men while camped there. The Tingari form part of a vast body of ancestral narratives that extend across the Western Desert. Their content is secret-sacred and their details restricted to initiated men. What the certificate records — and what this painting embodies — is the geography of their travels: the movement from waterhole to waterhole, the shaping of country, the establishment of law and ceremony enshrined in song cycles with hundreds of verses. Anatjari Tjampitjinpa was among the founding generation of Papunya Tula Artists and one of the most significant painters of the early movement. This work, painted at Papunya in December 1978, comes from the period when the Tingari landscape paintings of the senior Pintupi men were first being understood in the wider world as among the most formally and conceptually ambitious works the movement had produced.

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Sale 3 · Lot 93

Anatjari No.1 Tjampitjinpa

c.1927 – 1999

Region: Western Desert
Community: Papunya
Language group: Pintupi

Tingari at Yungalanya, 1978

synthetic polymer paint on canvas board

61 x 31 cm; 73 x 43 cm (framed)

Est. $2,000 – $3,000

Hammer $6,500

Provenance: Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, Alice Springs, NT, Cat No. A1781223 Private Collection, NSW Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd
Artwork story: Yungalanya is a group of rockholes far to the west of Alice Springs, near the Western Australia and Northern Territory border. The Papunya Tula Artists certificate for this work, signed in January 1979, records the composition with cartographic precision: the larger concentric circles indicate the most significant waterplaces at the site, the smaller circles the lesser rockholes, the interconnecting lines a creekbed, and the enclosed areas between them the camps of the Tingari men. The bands of dots that fill the surrounding ground represent the bush foods eaten by the men while camped there. The Tingari form part of a vast body of ancestral narratives that extend across the Western Desert. Their content is secret-sacred and their details restricted to initiated men. What the certificate records — and what this painting embodies — is the geography of their travels: the movement from waterhole to waterhole, the shaping of country, the establishment of law and ceremony enshrined in song cycles with hundreds of verses. Anatjari Tjampitjinpa was among the founding generation of Papunya Tula Artists and one of the most significant painters of the early movement. This work, painted at Papunya in December 1978, comes from the period when the Tingari landscape paintings of the senior Pintupi men were first being understood in the wider world as among the most formally and conceptually ambitious works the movement had produced.