Untitled, 1978

synthetic polymer paint on canvas board

71 x 55.5 cm; 88.5 x 73 cm (framed)

Est. $1,500 – $2,500

Hammer $7,000

Provenance: Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, Alice Springs, NT, Cat No. TT781222 Private Collection, NSW Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd
Artwork story: Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula began painting at Papunya in 1973, having spent time watching the senior men at work, and by the late 1970s had developed a practice of his own. This 1978 canvas board belongs to that period of consolidation. Its subject is women's business — in ancestral times a large group of women, the Kungka Tjuta, camped at Willkinkarra, a lake site near the Western Australia and NT border, while travelling north. At Willkinkarra they decorated their bodies with ceremonial designs and performed ceremonies known as Yawulu, using ngalyipi, string made from the bark of a bush that thrives in the surrounding sandhills. They played the leaf game Munni Munni in the hope of attracting suitable marriage partners, and while camped there were visited by two young women travelling from the east. The concentric circles mark the mythological site of Willkinkarra, the adjoining lines the ngalyipi used in ceremony, and the bands of dots across the ground the women's body paint. Applied with a precision and density that would come to define his mature practice, the dotted bands and concentric circles fill the board with a quiet, mesmerising authority. Tolson was born around 1942 just outside Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff), shortly after his family had moved east out of the Gibson Desert. He served as chairperson of Papunya Tula Artists from 1985 to 1995, and his later spear paintings, beginning with Straightening the Spears at Ilyingaunga in 1990, entered the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia and heralded a new minimalist direction in Western Desert painting.

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Sale 3 · Lot 96

Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula

c.1938 – 2001

Region: Western Desert
Community: Kintore (Walungurru)
Language group: Pintupi

Untitled, 1978

synthetic polymer paint on canvas board

71 x 55.5 cm; 88.5 x 73 cm (framed)

Est. $1,500 – $2,500

Hammer $7,000

Provenance: Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, Alice Springs, NT, Cat No. TT781222 Private Collection, NSW Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd
Artwork story: Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula began painting at Papunya in 1973, having spent time watching the senior men at work, and by the late 1970s had developed a practice of his own. This 1978 canvas board belongs to that period of consolidation. Its subject is women's business — in ancestral times a large group of women, the Kungka Tjuta, camped at Willkinkarra, a lake site near the Western Australia and NT border, while travelling north. At Willkinkarra they decorated their bodies with ceremonial designs and performed ceremonies known as Yawulu, using ngalyipi, string made from the bark of a bush that thrives in the surrounding sandhills. They played the leaf game Munni Munni in the hope of attracting suitable marriage partners, and while camped there were visited by two young women travelling from the east. The concentric circles mark the mythological site of Willkinkarra, the adjoining lines the ngalyipi used in ceremony, and the bands of dots across the ground the women's body paint. Applied with a precision and density that would come to define his mature practice, the dotted bands and concentric circles fill the board with a quiet, mesmerising authority. Tolson was born around 1942 just outside Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff), shortly after his family had moved east out of the Gibson Desert. He served as chairperson of Papunya Tula Artists from 1985 to 1995, and his later spear paintings, beginning with Straightening the Spears at Ilyingaunga in 1990, entered the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia and heralded a new minimalist direction in Western Desert painting.