acrylic on composition board (Masonite)
71.5 × 68 cm; 83 x 79.5 cm (framed)
Estimate $110,000 - $140,000
PROVENANCE
Painted at Papunya, NT, c. 1972
Seddell McLean, Vic acquired in the late 1970s
thence by decent in 2010
Private collection, Vic
D’Lan Contemporary, Vic Cat No. INV-TJAA-0006
EXHIBITED
Significant-2023 Part One, D’Lan Contemporary, Melbourne, Vic, 2 June - 22 July 2023
Essay by John Kean
This unusual painting appeared without a detailed provenance, its treatment and material qualities suggested that it might have been painted at Papunya 1971-1972. Its significance stems from the possibility that a renowned artist created it during the founding of contemporary desert art. While several of the painting’s pictorial elements are common to other early Papunya boards, others are unique and as a consequence, raise the bar required for positive attribution. Yet the object’s material qualities are compelling, for they are redolent of the properties of well-known and definitively provenance paintings produced at Papunya in the second half of 1972.
While I was initially wary of its authenticity, the painting’s idiosyncratic iconography demanded attention. If a founding Papunya artist, as suggested, created the work, the painting would substantially expand the already impressive range and scope of treatments employed by the 25 artists who founded contemporary art in Central Australia. After detailed examination together with Luke Scholes, I concluded the painting was, in all likelihood painted by a founding Papunya artist. There follows a summary of the reasoning behind my contention.
Period
The painting is most likely to have been created in a period that Vivien Johnson has characterised by as the ‘interregnum’.1 The interregnum commences in August 1972, with the departure of Geoffrey Bardon; a teacher widely attributed with facilitating the emergence of painting at Papunya and concludes with the employment of Peter Fannin as the first art advisor under the Papunya Tula Artists banner in December of that year. Paintings produced during the interregnum are frequently experimental, for the artists were working in advance of the conventions that came to characterise Papunya Tula painting as a recognisable style. Moreover, the artists worked in the Men’s Painting Room without the intervention of a non-Indigenous advisor.2 Excited and working with
extraordinary freedom, the artists innovated, inventing diverse approaches to the articulation of icons and decorative application. Some elements of these early Papunya painting, most notably, the imbrication of background patterns to form an expansive overall schema were used for a short period, then abandoned in favour of the now familiar dotted approach. Working as a collective, the artists called on elements drawn from ceremonial life, while taking inspiration from the innovations of the peers - the period resulted in a ‘blooming of a hundred flowers.’3
Many of the works created during the interregnum were subsequently documented and dispatched by Patricia Hogan, director of the Stuart Centre in Alice Springs, who at that moment, was the sole representative of the Papunya artists. Thus the majority of paintings produced during the period were lumped into Consignment 19, the largest and most diverse of the early consignments to have left Papunya. The stylistic mysteries of the consignment have yet to be fully disentangled.
Another consequence of the independence with which the founding artists operated during at the interregnum was the freedom with which they could sell their work to whom they pleased. A select group of customers consisted of an assortment of non-Aboriginal settlement workers and government officials. Other buyers were found among the visitors who stayed with friends and family members working at Papunya. As a result of these arbitrary acquisitions, an unknown number of undocumented paintings left the community to be transported to disparate locations, where they hung on study walls, or stored for decades, unsighted in a dark cupboard. Now, a full half-century after their acquisition, such paintings are occasionally uncovered in the estates of those who lived at or visited Papunya - undocumented jewels whose provenance is lost with the passing of a painting’s original purchaser. In these instances, the authenticity of a particular work must be assayed by the object’s material, iconographic and stylistic qualities. Such is the case with this mysterious board.
Materiality
The humble materials used in this work are typical of the interregnum. The Masonite substrate was a proprietary product used in many buildings on the community. Bardon and the artists had developed the restricted palette typical of paintings produced at Papunya. The paint in this work - black, deep red-oxide and white - is typical of works produced in the Men’s Painting Room in 1972. Notably, each line and dot is created with a stroke of carefully thinned paint. Despite having painted for such a short period, the artists approached their task with confidence. A close examination of any detail of the work reveals the direction and pressure of each stroke. The brushstrokes are typical of the most proficient of the early Papunya artists. The paint is often semi-transparent, and modulation of tone (both between various marks and within a single stroke of the brush) is critical to my confidence that the painting was created at Papunya in 1972.
Variations in transparency and the frequency of the dotted surface produce an uneven, shimmering surface typical of artists of this period. Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula first developed the effect of massed dots to evoke shimmering meteorological qualities associated with the Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa.4 The proficiency required to produce such attractive shimmering effects narrows the number of artists likely to have produced this work. Inspired by Warangkula’s ground breaking innovation, Anatjarri Tjakamarra, John Tjakamarra, Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, Timmy Payunka Tjapangati and Yala Yala Gibson Tjungurrayi produced exceptional paintings whose icons were embedded in a scintillating field of dots.
The back of the current work is cryptic, for there are no catalogue numbers or gallery labels to suggest or confirm the painting’s provenance. A simple baton has been attached to the Masonite from which a rough copper wire has been slung. The support structure is aged, unassuming and improvised. This utilitarian treatment is consistent with a work that has been purchased directly from the artist and hung with little fuss by the painting’s purchaser.
Iconography
This painting’s unique iconography is especially intriguing. When I was made aware of the painting in mid 2022, (via digital photographs taken on mobile phone), three dominant, rather eccentric icons initially raised my suspicion - they felt just too odd.
Firstly, the large black negative space, with its crooked line and curious grouping of outfacing bird prints (small red arrows) is striking, yet unfamiliar. Further the helicopter blade-shaped icon at the painting’s centre is quite unlike anything I had previously seen in a Papunya painting. Surely no one who wanted to fake and early Papunya board would use such uncharacteristic icons. Thirdly, the ‘pear-shaped’ object at the bottom of the board felt more familiar but took some untangling, before I could begin to interpret its form.
After some time however, I recognised that the general form and striated decoration of the pear-shaped object corresponded with character and incised treatment of a pearl shell pendant, such as those traded across the desert from Broome to be used as objects of power in rainmaking ceremonies. The identification of this object as a pearl shell informs my subsequent interpretation of the work.
When understood as representing a pearl shell, the overlapping ‘umbilical’ line could be read as a hair-string belt to which the nacre was attached, particularly if the loop (adjacent and immediately right of the top of the proposed shell) provided a means of attachment, through which the other end of the hair-string would be tied around a performers’ waist.
The painting’s background treatment feels more familiar. I contend the conjunction between the expansive underlying zigzag pattern and the pearl shell reinforces the painting’s subject as a Water Dreaming, and point towards a likely artist. But before jumping to any attribution, it is important to emphasise the underlying zigzag pattern is more redolent of the Pintupi art of the Western Desert than it is of the Anmatyerr artists of Central Australia thus eliminating at least two potential artists listed above.
Of the Pintupi painters, Johnny Warangkula is most powerfully associated with the Water Dreaming themed paintings, nonetheless Warangkula’s Water and bush tucker story (1972) possesses several similar features to the current work by an unknown artist: these features include a pearl shell shape (the imbricated shape at the painting’s centre), attenuated undulating lines (top) that are similar to the zigzag lines in the recently un-covered work, and a scintillating dotted surface. While I am confidant the current work is not by Warangkula, the correlation of shared attributes described above indicates its subject is probably Water Dreaming. The elimination of Warangkula further reduced the list of likely artists to Anatjarri Tjakamarra, John Tjakamarra, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, Timmy Payunka Tjapangati and Yala Yala Gibson Tjungurrayi.
Of the above artists, Mick Namarari painted several Water Dreaming subjects, however he tended to utilise a form of relaxed symmetry that is entirely absent this painting. Moreover, Namarari’s paintings generally reach a more harmonic resolution than is the case with the current work. In contrast, Timmy Payunka Tjapangati always sought varity to his subject manner over the search for aesthetic resolution. Like Namarari, Timmy Tjapangati created Water Dreaming paintings during the period in question; see ‘Big Rain Story’ and ‘Ngapa Tjukurrpa’ (Water Dreaming). Further, Timmy Tjapangati painted with a notably individuality, surely a defining quality of the artist who created the work under question. Further weight as to Timmy Tjapangati being a probable artist comes with the painting’s combination of geometric elements from the Western Desert with the more familiar dotted treatments, an identifiable property of several of Timmy Tjapangati early boards. Returning for a moment to the painting’s curious ‘pearl shell’ element, the organic shape of the associated hair string ‘belt’ is reminiscent of several biomorphic figures in Tjapangati’s paintings and painted artefacts. In summary, the proficiency, subject manner, together with the combination of disparate stylistic traditions, and the eccentricity exhibited in this work are distinguishing attributes that can be found in Timmy Tjapangati’s paintings of the 1970s.
Timmy Payunka Tjapangati was a mercurial figure, sometimes camping to the west of Papunya though frequently travelling several hundred kilometers to the northwest to stay with relatives in Balgo. Tjapangati was an exceptional artist who, until the last phase of his career did not paint in a consistent style. His edgy paintings, while difficult to corral into a single neat category, are quite unlike those of any other Pintupi artist. According to my reasoning, the eccentricity of this work, which in all probability represents Water Dreaming suggests that it was painted by a singular artist, who even within the experimental excitement of the Men’s Painting Room was brave enough to stretch the emerging conventions. Timmy Payunka Tjapangati was a proud man of high degree. Of all the individuals present at the Men’s Painting Room during the interregnum, I believe Timmy Payunka Tjapangati was is most likely to have painted the current work.
1 Vivien Johnson, Once Upon a Time in Papunya, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2010.
2 See Bardon’s description of his own interventions in Geoffrey Bardon and James Bardon, Papunya: A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2004.
3 See Kean 2023, Johnson 2010, Bardon 2004, Scholes 2017
4 Kean, 2023
