SHORTY LUNGKARDA TJUNGURRAYI

As one of the ‘new Pintupi’, arriving amongst the last of the nomadic groups to the enforced resettlement community of Papunya, Shorty Lungkarda, a senior hunter, dancer, and respected tribal leader, only joined the painting movement in 1972. Although he arrived toward the end of Geoffrey Bardon’s time there, moving out to Yayayi with other Pintupi just a year later, so palpable was his authority that, more than five years later in 1977, art advisor John Kean recalled being ‘overwhelmed’ in his presence. ‘I had never met anyone like this before …he (Shorty) spoke softly but insistently in Pintupi, always maintaining direct eye contact’ (Kean 2000: 221). Lungkarda’s previous experiences with white people had been limited to groups of documentary makers whom he had met and guided through his homelands in the Western Desert. Speaking little English, he relied on others to translate for him. He was in a kirda/kirdungurlu relationship with Nosepeg Tjupurrula, who was of the same age and communicated with Bardon through him and his friend Johnny Warangkula. From the very outset, the bold visual simplicity of his artistic compositions conveyed an elemental power, and he became one of the select group granted a government allowance that enabled them to paint full-time. Geoff Bardon (1991) recalls how the painting room that was established at Papunya resounded with laughter and animated discussion or at times became intensely concentrated in a sea of silence as the men poured their love of their distant homelands into their work. Lungkarda worked ‘impervious to disturbance’, the seriousness of his intention animating each dot.

Money earned from painting circulated through the community, adding to its overall resources and returning status to these venerated leaders. Lungkarda’s ceremonial knowledge and tribal seniority played an instrumental role in consolidating the ‘classic’ Pintupi style. It later provided the bedrock for future and less formal developments. The main subject was Tingari, the central creation myth shared across the distances and differences of Western Desert tribal groups. Tingari is the most important teaching myth, used to initiate the younger generations through revealing their social identity and spiritual inheritance. This knowledge is objectified and elucidated through a deep relationship to the land. After a period of artistic experimentation, including important decisions about which subjects could be revealed to a wider and uninitiated audience, a consistent and recognizable style emerged. A non-rigid grid of circles symbolises sites that are drawn together and connected by meandering lines of ancestral travel. Areas of background dotting accentuate landscape contours and are also used to conceal aspects of a story that are too sacred to reveal. The basic earth colours of the ‘Papunya palette’ were adopted as the general rule, with an amazing variety of hues being mixed and produced.

Fred Myers sensed the authority of Lungkarda and other elders during an incident in which a young man was held responsible for a car accident. The young man sat outside the circle of conferring elders, downcast and ostracised by his community; the gravity of the situation played out through time and distance. Slowly, he was drawn in and allowed to participate in the group’s painting activities that continued all the while alongside the discussions. 'A passage had occurred,' writes Myers, 'he now knows who will look after him when he is in trouble' (2002: 71). The restoration of the social and spiritual fabric of the dislocated Pintupi people became enmeshed with the new forms of art-making. Painting allowed them to affirm their identity and pass on their Dreamings to the next generation even hundreds of miles away from their traditional sacred sites. Eventually, money earned from painting allowed them to return west to their homelands and set up the outstations of Kintore and then Kiwirrkura. Lungkarda was an assertive leader in the ‘outstation movement’ and continued painting from Kintore, where he settled with his family in the early 1980s.

For various reasons during the early years, painting was restricted to men only. However, Lungkarda’s adopted daughter, Lynda Syddick Napaltjarri, gained valuable experience and skills assisting him. Women’s painting was soon to emerge as a significant creative force and, under Lugkarda’s guidance, Lynda Syddick emerged, according to Myer, to become the ‘first Pintupi modernist painter’. By the time she was established as an artist of renown in the early 1980s, her work was the first to give voice to the changing influences that fed into the younger generation 'less driven by the protocols of the elders’ (Myers 2002: 304).

Shorty Lungkarda’s work remains one of the foundation stones of the entire Western Desert art movement. Without the deep connection to the ancestral powers, reformulated and consolidated through his knowledge, determination, and intrinsic talent, contemporary Australian art would be very much the poorer.