TIMMY PAYUNGKA TJAPANGATI

Timmy Payungka was one of the original group of artists who began painting for Geoff Bardon in 1971. Seeking sustenance during severe drought, he and his family had walked a great distance across the desert from their homelands in the Gibson Desert, west of Wilkinkarra, Western Australia. After arriving at Haasts Bluff during his childhood he later traveled with family members back to his homelands far to the west of Lake Mackay near his birthplace, the important claypan site of Parayilpil. It was here in this country that his father passed away and Timmy was taken with his adoptive fathers further south to Yarrannga rockhole where the family were contacted by welfare branch patrols and moved to Umari rockhole. In 1957 Timmy accompanied Jerremy Long to Mount Leibig and on to Haasts Bluff making a brief visit to Alice Springs before returning to his wife and child and escorting them in the company of Uta Uta Tjangala in to Haasts Bluff during the following year. They were amongst the last group of Pintupi to arrive in Haasts Bluff before becoming amongst the first to settle at Papunya. (Johnson V, 2008, p47) By then, Timmy’s experience traveling with white men and keen sense of responsibility for his people prompted him to become a guardian for the new comers who followed.

Payungka proved to be a highly individual painter from the outset and Geoff Bardon felt a natural affinity with this “tall boisterous man with an exuberant laugh”. He was by all accounts extremely handsome with a fine physique, and his confidence, and extraverted personality, was reflected in his art. This was typified by vivacious brushstrokes and the resourcefulness in which he transposed Dreaming stories onto the confined painting surface without loosing its vibrant sense of power. Bardon suspected Timmy to be a Kadaitcha Man, a secret enforcer of tribal law, because of his knowledge and apparent ease when broaching upon the most feared stories. During subsequent travels in the company of Dick Kimber his knowledge of his country was extensive and he proved to be an exceptional tracker. During the early days of painting at Papunya Timmy was inclined to paint unrestrained despite prevailing anxiety about revealing sacred material. Many of his early works include an occasional mix of stylised ceremonial figures, animals and simplified objects such as headpieces and bullroarers, only partly disguised among more abstract designs. In works like his Kadaitcha Dreaming which he created in 1972, lines radiate out from the central focus, a ceremonial Kadaitcha hat, while on the surrounding prepared earth, Kadaitcha slippers, knee imprints and ritual objects signify a feared punishment being negotiated for an offender. Similarly in Men’s Spirit Ceremony 1972, Timmy painted a bird’s eye view down upon two stylised men who face each other in the middle of a field of dancing tracks and ceremonial objects. His love of ceremonial activity and the sharing of ritual knowledge saw him preoccupied with carving sacred boards when paint and canvas were not available and in 1974 he left Papunya and settled for a time at Balgo Hills. He joined the move to Kintore in 1981 and lived with Uta Uta and John John Bennett 30 Km. from the community until the establishment of Kiwirrkurra where he settled until the early 1990’s by which time his health had deteriorated to the point that he needed to move in to Alice Springs for regular medical treatment.

Payungka’s Tingari works of the period 1975-feature the concentric circles representing sit down places and the linking straight lines for traveling signs in keeping with the Pintupi conventions of the time. These ‘mind maps’ of his immense homeland depicted important places for a long journey, such as food and water sources as well as places of spiritual significance and regeneration. His paintings occasionally included elongated ovals that depict caves, very rare in this area and places of great importance, where Dreaming ceremonies took place.

However from the early 1980’s onward Timmy increasingly removed representational motifs from his paintings and became more focused on Pintupi male conventions akin to formal abstraction. He used repeated patterning to build a palpable sense of intensity, augmented by contrasting areas of dotted colour and experimentation with tonal arrangements. These late career paintings, characterized by reductive designs in which the repetition of geometric keyed elements concentrates the visual power in referencing the sacred realm, assert Timmy’s ceremonial authority.

As his physical health began to fade under the ravages of diabetes he underwent dialysis regularly in Alice Springs. He was amongst a group of Aboriginal artists awarded damages after their sacred designs had been used without permission in a commercial carpet manufacture during the mid 1990’s. The incident served as an indelible reminder to the general public as well as the business world that the Dreaming stories and their ancient symbolic language are not to be taken lightly. Though his legacy is not as potent as a number of his contemporaries Timmy Payungka played a vital role in the emergence of western desert art. He may well have been a Kadaitcha as Bardon surmised. While his paintings may not be as highly recongised as those of several of his contemporaries, they emanate a subtle power and physical presence in keeping with his powerful ritual authority and deep traditional knowledge

© Adrian Newstead

References

Bardon, Geoff and James, Papunya; A Place Made After the Story, Miegunyah Press, Australia, 2004

Perkins, H., and Fink H., Papunya Tula; Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2000

Sydney Morning Herald, “Record Damages for Black Painters”, p.4, Wed,. December14, 1994

Tradition Today, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney