Lightning, 2005

wamulu plant fibre, natural ochre and binder on board

120 x 45 cm

Est. $2,000 – $3,000

Hammer $1,500

Provenance: Commissioned by Arnaud Serval, Alice Springs, NT, 2004, Commission number TET010-05 Annandale Galleries, Sydney, NSW, Cat No. ASer 17 Private Collection, NSW, acquired from the above Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Annandale Galleries and a copy of the exhibition catalogue Wamulu: new medium of ground paintings natural fibres & ochre on board, Annandale Galleries, Sydney, NSW, 2 March – 2 April 2005
Exhibited: Wamulu: new medium of ground paintings natural fibres & ochre on board, Annandale Galleries, Sydney, NSW, 2 March – 2 April 2005
Artwork story: The entire ceremonial logic of the ground painting demands its destruction. When the ceremony ends, the design is swept away — its power discharged, its knowledge returned to Country. The Wamulu project, conceived by French collector and curator Arnaud Serval between 2002 and 2005, asked four senior Warlpiri men to do the opposite: to make permanent what had always been temporary, using the fibres of the small yellow desert flower that gives the medium its name. Ted Egan Tjangala was one of those four men, and he brought to the project something the others could not: he was Kirda, primary custodian, of the Lightning Dreaming. As Arnaud Serval's documentation records, a Kurdungurlu, or ceremonial custodian, assisted throughout to ensure protocol was observed — the dual authority structure of Warlpiri ceremony carried intact into the new medium. Lightning was made outside Alice Springs in October and November 2004 and depicts the journey of the Lightning Ancestor across Country. Against a pale wamulu ground, two wavy vertical lines of deep brown ochre move from the base of the board to its uppermost edge, short dashes radiating from each side — the whole composition depicting the journey of the Lightning Ancestor across Country. The tall narrow format, 120 centimetres high against only 45 wide, intensifies the sense of directed vertical movement — a single ancestral force travelling through landscape, rendered in a medium whose every fibre was gathered from that same Country. Tjangala had spent twenty-five years as a police tracker and co-founded the Janganpa dance and theatre group before joining the Wamulu project. In 2002 he had travelled to Paris to construct a traditional ground painting for Wati, les Hommes de Loi at the Passage de Retz — an early sign of the cultural ambition that Wamulu would fully realise.

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Sale 3 · Lot 97

Ted Egan Tjangala

Region: Central Desert & Tanami

Lightning, 2005

wamulu plant fibre, natural ochre and binder on board

120 x 45 cm

Est. $2,000 – $3,000

Hammer $1,500

Provenance: Commissioned by Arnaud Serval, Alice Springs, NT, 2004, Commission number TET010-05 Annandale Galleries, Sydney, NSW, Cat No. ASer 17 Private Collection, NSW, acquired from the above Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Annandale Galleries and a copy of the exhibition catalogue Wamulu: new medium of ground paintings natural fibres & ochre on board, Annandale Galleries, Sydney, NSW, 2 March – 2 April 2005
Exhibited: Wamulu: new medium of ground paintings natural fibres & ochre on board, Annandale Galleries, Sydney, NSW, 2 March – 2 April 2005
Artwork story: The entire ceremonial logic of the ground painting demands its destruction. When the ceremony ends, the design is swept away — its power discharged, its knowledge returned to Country. The Wamulu project, conceived by French collector and curator Arnaud Serval between 2002 and 2005, asked four senior Warlpiri men to do the opposite: to make permanent what had always been temporary, using the fibres of the small yellow desert flower that gives the medium its name. Ted Egan Tjangala was one of those four men, and he brought to the project something the others could not: he was Kirda, primary custodian, of the Lightning Dreaming. As Arnaud Serval's documentation records, a Kurdungurlu, or ceremonial custodian, assisted throughout to ensure protocol was observed — the dual authority structure of Warlpiri ceremony carried intact into the new medium. Lightning was made outside Alice Springs in October and November 2004 and depicts the journey of the Lightning Ancestor across Country. Against a pale wamulu ground, two wavy vertical lines of deep brown ochre move from the base of the board to its uppermost edge, short dashes radiating from each side — the whole composition depicting the journey of the Lightning Ancestor across Country. The tall narrow format, 120 centimetres high against only 45 wide, intensifies the sense of directed vertical movement — a single ancestral force travelling through landscape, rendered in a medium whose every fibre was gathered from that same Country. Tjangala had spent twenty-five years as a police tracker and co-founded the Janganpa dance and theatre group before joining the Wamulu project. In 2002 he had travelled to Paris to construct a traditional ground painting for Wati, les Hommes de Loi at the Passage de Retz — an early sign of the cultural ambition that Wamulu would fully realise.