GALLERY I is dedicated to the Masters of the Papunya Tula Art Movement, which came into being in the early 1970s and found pride of place on the international art stage through the creative expertise of a small group of desert tribesmen, who remain recognized as the founders of Contemporary Aboriginal Art. Other Aboriginal artists who contributed to the Movement in the first ten years or so, all played a role in furthering the development of Contemporary Aboriginal Art and some of their works can be found here in gallery 1, or on other pages identified in relation to their clans, or tribes, or language groups, as all cannot be included on one page.
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
(Pultara) AO (Officer of the Order of Australia)
(c.1937 -
2002
)
One of the founding fathers of the Papunya Tula Art Movement, this Anmatyerre artist remains the most celebrated artist in the history of Aboriginal Art and is the first Papunya Tula artist to be given a Retrospective, which began in October 2003 at the Art Gallery of South Australia and was on tour throughout 2004 and ended in 2005. Featured in numerous Aboriginal art books published to date, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri is recognized as a Master of colour, composition and symbolic narration of a unique ancient culture that his work and the Art of his contemporaries helped to preserve following the near decay of Aboriginal Culture under Colonial Rule.
This Man's Love Story (Ngarlu) by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri is
positively a world treasure, as is the artist.
More..
Title: Man's Love Story (Ngarlu)
Date: 1993
Size: 181 x 125cm ( 5` 11 1/4`` x 4` 1``)
Medium: Acrylic on Linen
Provenance: Painted at Warrandyte for Milanka J Sullivan
F. Mosmeri and M. J. Sullivan Collection
PRICE: AU$1.1M
Exhibition: Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri Retrospective: Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery. Araluen Art Centre.
Exhibition Catalogue number 47
Publication: Johnson V, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Art Gallery of South Australia, exhibition catalogue, Adelaide 2003 p.182-183, illus. p.247 for a detailed analysis.
Shown alongside many of this artist`s masterworks in the `Clifford Possum Retrospective`, this painting proved to be in the right company in this major exhibition and remains a remarkable aesthetic work that serves as another example as to why this artist is recognized as the most accomplished and widely respected artist in the History of Contemporary Aboriginal Art.
As for the work itself, this painting comes from what can best be described as Clifford Possum’s `orange period` in which the artists turned to using orange on a regular basis for approximately 18 months, or so, due to an eye problem, which made orange a choice colour that the artist could readily recognize against shades of pink and shades of yellow ochre.
Here orange coloured symbolic motifs are shown resting on pastel coloured patterning formed as lines to impart the idea of `web sticks` used for making hair spindles, such as the one shown resting in the middle of this work’s sacred sandpainting, which was created with the hair spindle with hooks made from kangaroo claws by the artist`s ancient ancestor, or father, as part of a love magic ceremony conducted during the Dreamtime at an Anmatyarre site known as Ngarlu.
Besides being web sticks, the background lines in this work also double to give expression to ceremonial body paint, as does the motif in the foreground, which also lends to the idea of a `willy willy`, or whirl wind, that threatened to disrupt the ancestor’s ground design while he engaged in his ceremony that was designed to capture the heart of a woman, who was considered not suitable for the young ancestor to marry in accordance to his traditional law. The ancestor, however, was too taken by the woman to give up on her affection, so he continued on with his love ceremony in anycase.
Driven by passion, the ancestor’s ceremony also involved him in `singing` a love song, which travelled to the woman’s campsite some distance away and crept into her dreams. When the woman woke up all that she could think about was the young ancestor and so she made her way to Ngarlu to find him, as represented by the footprints that lead south to the ancestor’s ground design. The other prints in this work represent the tracks of the ancestor, which he made as he searched the area for the materials that he used for his ceremony. The ancestor is also represented by the symbolic U-shape resting near unspun tuffs of hair and a nulla nulla, or fighting stick, which also doubles as a phallic symbol.
The other phallic symbol in this work is the diamond shape motif that represents the woman and doubles to give expression to a similar looking rock at Ngarlu that is said to be the woman’s `sex`, which changed into stone after she and her lover-husband were killed by family members for breaking the law, which prohibited them from marrying. This, however, is but one version of the law-breaking couple's fate when in fact three are actually told: one for children, which is less of a Shakespearian love tragedy; another for the uninitiated, which the artist claimed was often told by people with little knowledge; then there is a third that the artists claims is “the true one” in which the law-breaking couple were killed, but their children were left to live on at Larumba (Napperby Soakage) as Anmatyarre, or Pultara, `children of the wrong skin`.
This painting then is not simply a love story, but also a Genesis telling of the birth of Anmatyarre people, who came from this Ngarlu `Man's Love Story` of forbidden love. Of a Culture without the written word the importance of this painting can hardly be underestimated; nor can the creative imagination of the artist, who could bring such a visual telling work into being and make it one of his finest paintings among other fine works of `dreamings` that expand on this history like individual pages in a history book, which gives expression to the life of a people from the desert: the artist`s own.
This description is but a part of what makes this work a treasure, the rest has to do with the aesthetic, which is absolutely remarkable with its spatial quality and perfect palette, though few people would need to be told this given that the sophisticated aesthetic nature of this painting is so clearly obvious.
For more information on the Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri Retrospective and on the artist himself visit the Art Gallery of South Australia and click on `EXHIBITIONS` ...scroll down this page and then click on `PAST EXHIBITIONS`. This site is particularly interesting, not only for collectors, but also for teachers and students with an interest in Aboriginal Art.
Sales/information: Artspeak@bigpond.com
Tele: (+61) (0) 3 98443780
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
(Pultara) AO (c.1937-2002)
Title: Eagle and Bower-bird Dreaming (Ceremony)
Date: 1996
Size: 126 x 82 cm (Aprox. 4` 9 1/2`` x 2` 8 1/4``)
Medium: Acrylic on Linen
Provenance: Painted at Warrandyte
Private Collection
PRICE: AU$174,000
In 1996 Clifford Possum began paying close attention to works specifically focused on men's secret-sacred ceremonial sites and men's ceremonies, which the artist captured through traditional symbols and symmetry. This work is one such painting showing feathers massed together forming parallel bands expressing ceremonial body decoration associated to birds, or Eagle and Bower-birds to be precise. Within these bands and along the outer edges of the picture plane concentric circles attached by lines form traditional symbols lending to sandpaintings resting on linear patterning that gives expression to bodypaint, which is also the subject of the grey dots in the background. While the loose white motifs lend to the idea of fallen feathers, or down, on ceremonial ground and double as the down of young birds.
Sales/information: Artspeak@bigpond.com
Tele: (+6) (0) 3 98443780
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
(Pultara) AO (c.1937-2002)
Title: Lightning Dreaming
Date: 1996
Size: 146 x 82 cm (Aprox. 4` 9 1/2`` x 2` 8 1/4``)
Medium: Acrylic on Linen
Provenance: Painted at Warrandyte
F. Mosmeri and M. J. Sullivan Collection
PRICE: AU$220,000
"We know certain things from the long record of art history that talents are always unevenly distributed; that the core meaning of an art movement must be unearthed through relentless study; that the weight of significance is shouldered by a few individual artists who stand out from the mass and whose work repays prolonged attention." ... Nicolas Rothwell 2004. Quoted in an article titled `Culture Shift` by Sebastian Smee .... Weekend Australian, March 2006.
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri is one such individual and his best works from the 1990s here at Artspeak and beyond give us much to think about, as do this artist`s best works from the start of his career, because this man from the desert was an artist to the core.
Fake and overtly assisted works said to belong to this artist might cloud judgement of Clifford Possum's paintings, but this problem exists for a number of major artists, including Emily Kngwarreye and Rover Thomas, which is an annoyance, but not an issue that dismisses authentic works, as is known from art history.
Assisted paintings too are considered authentic, particularly in the Aboriginal Art arena where artists were never discouraged from working together on one work, or involving their kinspeople in their art making, but where this has become a problem is where relatives and hangers-on have taken over from `the teacher`.
No amount of assistance seems to be a bother to some people within the `inner circle`, as the Kathleen Petyarre scandal shows, but even an entire background having been painted into a said Clifford Possum painting by one or more of this artist`s relatives, or community members, really does make a difference to the aesthetic quality of this artist`s works, for no-one can mimic the mind and hand of such a creative person.
Having all Aboriginal works properly labelled meets resistance from owners, sellers and also specialists in fear of having `egg of their face`, but it is just a matter of time before Clifford Possum's own body of work created by the artist`s own hand, or almost entirely, will be separated from the `pretends` of which some have even been published.
There is no doubt that the Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri works on this website will be included in the mix of this artist`s own work and better yet these works and others of quality from `Warrandyte` and beyond during the 1990s will be among the artist`s best works and will serve to complete this artist`s own `story` and the `story` of the Papunya Tula Art Movement.
Sales/information: Artspeak@bigpond.com
Tele: (+6) (0) 3 98443780
Billy
Stockman Tjapaltjarri (c1929)
From left: Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, Geoffrey Bardon
and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri standing in front of this special painting
after a very `sad` Geoffrey Bardon was stopped by police from entering the
Papunya Community (where he established the Papunya Tula Art Movement), because he
did not seek a permit to do so prior to his 1991 visit to the Northern
Territory. The police were instructed to stop Geoffrey Bardon from entering
Papunya by a prominent figure within the Aboriginal Art `establishment`.
Title: Snake Dreaming
Date: 1991
Size: 169 x 124 cm (Aprox. 5` 6 1/2`` x 4` 3/4``)
Medium: Acrylic on Linen
Code: BST91327
Provenance: Tngengkarre Studio Gallery
F. Mosmeri and M. J. Sullivan Collection
PRICE: AU$220,000
This painting comes with accompanying documentation from Artspeak and a collection of related photographic images, which in themselves are a treasure. I cannot guarantee that Billy's wife did not assist the artist in part with the background, but as the work photographs show and from the time spent with the artist while creating this painting, this work is largely, or totally by the artist`s own hand and in real the work is grand and in a constant state of motion due largely to the spiralling snake juxtaposed against a solid more stable background.
From a horizontal view point this painting is just as pleasing to the eye and the snake eggs and symbolic circles (snake holes or burrows) can almost be said to be an amplified version of dot patterning and in a sense they are. For this painting is an expression of a Snake Dreaming, which is bound to ceremony of the secret-sacred kind associated to tribal men. In this regard the circles act as bodypaint and the central concentric circle comes to represent a ceremonial ground design, while doubling as the site where the snake dwells and brings life into the world, as shown by the eggs.
The patches of colour also represent bodypaint, as does the design on the snake's body, which is coiled around the central circle in a manner also seen in other men's paintings from the desert, as well as on bark paintings that come from an entirely different region in Aboriginal Australia. This shows a certain connection among tribespeople, who share a spiritual intimacy with snakes, as have most human societies from the past right up to the present day to our own Judaeo-Christian world, though in the latter the snake takes on a malevolent characteristic, while the opposite is the case in societies that have maintained a closer connection to the natural world.
There are many ideas that come from art that speaks; each work on this website could warrant an entire essay made up of many words, as with this work of art by Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, who was at Papunya on day one of the Papunya Tula Art Movement and lent his hand to the first Papunya work made on the settlement's school wall and kept making works of art until he could no more in this new Millennium due to old age.
To the young sharply dressed sellers in the market today who play a major role in shaping taste, the Art of Billy Stockman might not impress, but regardless of their thinking, works such as this Snake Dreaming by this artist has a life of its own filled with energy and mind eternal that demands attention even where attention is not willingly offered.
To be sure, this is not `lolly pop` work made for the designer home, which will become obsolete over time, but rather a painting that will stand the test of time, for this is an enduring work of art not a fashion statement.
Sales/information: Artspeak@bigpond.com
Tele: (+6) (0) 3 98443780
Charlie
Egalie Tjapaltjarri (c1934-2002)
Photograph Copyright: Artspeak Studio Gallery
Title: Snake Dreaming
Date: 1992
Size: 124 x 97 cm (Aprox. 4` 3/4`` x 3` 2 1/4``)
Medium: Acrylic on Linen
Code: CET92
Provenance: F. Mosmeri and M. J. Sullivan Collection
PRICE: AU$120,000
This painting comes with accompanying documentation from Artspeak and a collection of related photographic images, which offer sound proof of authenticity.
The following quotation is featured on page 504 in Geoffrey and James Bardon's book titled `PAPUNYA A Pace Made After the Story....The beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement`.
"Many people watching and participating from the beginning saw the shift in control of the movement from those involved in wider political and social aspirations of Aboriginal people and communities to the power players in the art world, for whom it sometimes seemed that only the best objects mattered. The loss of status of some of the early painters was a little disturbing. Billy Stockman, for example, who had observed the first beginnings on the Papunya School wall, chaired the Papunya Council and became a member of the Aboriginal Arts Board, was deemed a secondary painter by the new market-place. Others overlooked include Charlie Egalie Tjapaltjarri, a beautiful painter, and his brother David Corby Tjapaltjarri ... Geoff Bardon's final assembly of all those great men's paintings, offers a chance to re-examine and celebrate the contributions of many, not just the well-known contemporary masters."
Jennifer Isaacs AM
Writer and Indigenous Art Specialist
Charlie Egalie`s work is of a kind that does not reflect the same Europeanization of Aboriginal Desert Art that began taking hold of this unique art form when dealers and minders began spilling their own ideals onto Aboriginal painters in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Proud of his own work, as was Billy Stockman and Clifford Possum and other Aboriginal desert artists from the 1970s, Charlie Egalie, like his contemporaries, who continued to work into the 1990s, did pay the price for rejecting ideals that were not his own, but simply money making was never his primary goal. For he and his contemporaries were part of an Art Movement, which was as much as a revolt against European, or new settler, dominance as it was an Art Movement ultimately aimed at preserving native culture through art that spoke a language born in the desert over a period of 40,000 to 60,000 years.
The land that Charlie Egalie makes claim to in this painting is called Kunatarayi, or Kunatjarri (spelling?), which is Warlpiri country that the artist inherited from his father. Showing wallaby and budgerigar tracks, this work chiefly concentrates on a snake recognized as `Bullkarti`, which is shown coiled around Kunatarayi`s men’s ceremonial camp where Bullkarti still lives and catches wallabies for tucker, but also tries to catch budgerigars to eat, but they know when this Ancestor snake, which is seemingly a Desert Death Adder, is approaching, so they fly away to save themselves, but always come back to this sacred site where tribal youths undergo the rites of passage to manhood.
All the concentric circles in this work represent some specific topographical aspect of Kunatarayi, be it a rock hole, or resting place, that also doubles to act as a sacred sandpainting that is further advanced by the works background, which is both sandpainting and body paint in an interlocking line design that closely mimics ceremonial designs made from crushed plants and other natural materials, as shown in the following photographs partially showing a desert sandpainting. This Dreaming has a song for the snake that Charlie sang while discussing this work, which may not be Europeanized, but lucky for us and future generations, who can appreciate a tribesman’s own unique aesthetic record of a culture near forgotten.
Johnny
Warangkula Tjupurrula (c.1920-2001)
Title: Old Man's Bush Tucker Dreaming
Date: 1992
Size: 84 x 56 cm (aprox. 3` 3 1/4`` x 2` 2 1/4``)
Medium: Acrylic on Linen
Provenance: Commissioned by Frank Mosmeri during a period while Johnny was largely being ignored before Sotheby`s sold Warangkula`s work for an enormous amount of money in the mid 1990s.
F. Mosmeri and M. J. Sullivan Collection
PRICE: AU$28,800
This painting comes with accompanying documentation and a few related photographic images showing the artist creating this work, that can be compared to another work of the same title by Johnny W., which is featured on page 358 in Geoffrey and James Bardon's book titled `PAPUNYA A Pace Made After the Story....The beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement`.
To describe this work as a masterpiece would be an exaggeration, but it is, nevertheless, richer in real and has genuine integrity and remains an important work in the artist`s own history and to the history of the Papunya Tula Art Movement, which did not end when Geoffrey Bardon left Papunya, but continued on with each of the founding fathers of the Movement until each put down their `brush` because of old age or death. To my understanding one remaining precursor of the Movement -Long Jack Philipus- is still painting today, or at least is said to be.
Johnny W, as he is generally referred to, largely slipped away from painting during the 1980s due to a terrible arm injury, that was never given medical treatment. The injury was the result of a `jealous fight`, which Johnny was quite proud of, because he won. But given the condition that he left his opponent in and due to his own painful injury, the artists was forced to remain low-key for many years, even though what he did was not considered outside the law in traditional society, in fact engaging in a `jealous fight` over a woman was thought heroic. To my understanding Johnny did not engage in much creative work after this event; his re-entry into the art arena was largely a consequence of gaining attention when one of his paintings sold for many dollars in 1996, or 1997.
Anatjari
Tjampitjinpa (c.1920-1999)
Title: Untitled
Date: 1990
Size: 122 x 91 cm (Aprox. 7` 2 1/2`` x 4` 3/4``)
Medium: Acrylic on Linen
Provenance: Papunya Tula Artists. Catalogue No: AT900722
Tngengkarre Studio Gallery
F. Mosmeri and M. J. Sullivan Collection
PRICE: AU$33,000
This work is most probably one of a very few paintings showing Anatjari Tjampitjinpa with one of his own completed works. The small painting in his hand is another work that the artist created for Papunya Tula Artists, which the artist had just completed and had brought it into town from the bush.
For people who have seen sandpaintings, or pictures of sandpaintings, it remains clear that this work is drawn from sacred Pintupi ground designs that embody the profound in Pintupi Culture. For those of us who live in contemporary society, works such as this, which was created by a genuine Pintupi tribesmen, is as close as one can get to being in the presence of such wonderment associated to an ancient tribal culture, which cannot sustain in the manner that it has due to the intrusion of a more dominant culture (our own), which has infiltrated Pintupi life. Such infiltration is unavoidable in today's world and is not necessarily a negative, but for Anatjari and his contemporaries our dominant culture had little impact on their thinking, for their own unique view of themselves and life remained too internalized to effect change.
What all this means to say is that this work by Anatjari is a treasure, and while it may not be an Anatjari masterwork in the strictest sense of the word, it, nevertheless, is an important painting with substance and visual appeal. Featuring concentric circles, which represent significant sites joined by lines that give form to pathways, or journey lines, this work can best be described as a dreaming map of a vast stretch of desert country within the artist`s Pintupi homelands. A more detailed description is shown in its accompanying documentation, though this too is quite limited, for the Pintupi artists of old imparted very little about the details of their work, which remain conceptually imbedded with secret-sacred information that outsiders, or the uninitiated, were prohibited from knowing.
Sales/information: Artspeak@bigpond.com
NOTE! Other Masters` works can be found throughout this site.
More paintings to come
All material on this site is protected by Australian and international copyright and other intellectual property laws. Users may not do anything which interferes with or breaches those laws or the intellectual property rights in the material. Where there is a wish to use expression: permission is granted on the basis that the source is acknowledged, this permission extends to the non-reproduction use of the art of Milanka J Sullivan, but does not include photographic material and does not include imagery belonging to Aboriginal Artists, which remains the sole property of the artist or artist`s estate. If unclear seek clarity.