Earth Art - Australian Aboriginal Paintings

Thomas Tjapaltjarri - Australian Aboriginal Artist

2011-09-23T17:59:00.000-07:00

The mysterious “Tingari” is a creation myth that refers to a group of ancestral elders who embarked upon periodic epic journeys through vast tracts of the Gibson/Western Deserts. As they traveled, they performed sacred and mystical rituals which opened up new land. The adventures of these Tingari groups are enshrined in numerous song and painting cycles which still inform the Pintupi people today. With no written language, the songs and paintings of the Tingari Cycle form an integral part of the “passing down” of the ancient laws, Dreamings and Culture to the next generation of initiates known as the Punyunyu. The Pintupi were a nomadic people who wandered over incredible distances from west of Lake MacKay in Western Australia to just east of Kintore in the Northern Territory. Their very survival depended upon their intimate knowledge of the land and the exact position of the next underground waterhole. The remarkable paintings of the Pintupi are in effect aerialview landscapes sometimes on a scale that reflects the vastness of their Country. These paintings map not only the physical landscape, but also the spiritual element and how the two interact. Indeed, the Pintupi lands are so remote that only as recently as 1984, a family group of nine Pintupi speakers walked out the desert into the small community at Kiwirrkura just inside the Western Australian border. These people had lived undetected and completely unaware of Western Culture. When they walked into the 20th Century, they brought with them intact Dreamings and lore that stretched back tens of thousands of years.

Thomas Tjapaltjarri was born c. 1964 in the Gibson Desert, Western Australia. In 1984 he was one of a group of nine that made national headlines. Dubbed "the Last Nomads" the group caused a sensation when thy walked out of the desert and made contact with the "modern" world for the first time. Leading a completely traditional existence before this time they were finally forced out of the desert to seek eligible wives for Thomas and his brothers Warlimpirrnga and Walala. Three years later Thomas commenced painting for Papunya Tula artists after encouragement from Warlimpirrnga. Of the original group who emerged from the desert in 1984 the nomadic streak remains strongest perhaps in Thomas. Now an established and gifted artist Thomas paints in a style similar to that of his brothers. The stories or "dreamings" of the Tingari Cycle are an important body of myth concerning the early journey paths of Tingari Ancestors throughout the "tjukurrpa" or dreamtime. It is these stories which Thomas conveys through his skillful brushwork across the canvas.

Charlene Carrington - New Upcoming Australian Artist

2011-07-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

Artist

Charlene Carrington

About artist

Artwork

Tribute to Paddy Jampinjii

Created Year: 2008
Medium: Ochre (Earth Pigments)
Genre: Aboriginal
Size: 120 × 90cm
Investment Grade: Mid Market
Colour Palette: Neutrals
Catalogue: ABCC5OL

Certified Valuation

$6,500.00

View Certificate

Sale Price

$6,500.00

Charlene is definitely one of the most talented, exciting young artists in Australia. Born in Perth, she grew up at Warmun, Turkey Creek, Western Australia. At 30 years of age, mother of six, she has established herself as a strong woman, an enthusiastic painter with an enquiring mind and the ability to fulfil her highest aspirations. She is ambitious, determined to succeed in the Art World, yet still retaining a deep love of her extended family and always they are uppermost in Charlene’s life.

Charlene started painting at an early age – the second child of Churchill Cann and Sade Carrington, both International Artists, her earlier paintings reflected the flowing lines and meticulous method of her mother. She was known to comment when young that she just didn’t feel right when trying her father’s style, but it is now very apparent that many of her paintings are leaning towards Churchill’s swirling strokes and incredible ochre blending. Texas Downs has produced some wonderful painters, and, although the subject matter of Charlene’s art is wide and varied, she admits to enjoying most of all the camping trips with her family to their home country Texas, and the paintings she completes of that land, with the Dreaming stories which her “kangayi”, grandmother Betty Carrington and her other relatives have taught her.

Undoubtedly her art will be influenced by the artists she has learnt from and painted with – the best – Queenie McKenzie, Jack Britten who taught both Sade and then Charlene, her grandfather Beerbee Mungnari and Uncle Hector Jandany, Rover Thomas, George Mung Mung and many of the senior Warmun artists. However, Charlene is taking the ochre medium into a totally new perspective, still with the Ngarrangkarni (Dreaming) Stories of her Kitja culture.

Awards

1999   Special Commendation, East Kimberley Art Awards, WA
2002   Selected as the representative for the ABC's "Loud" Youth Arts Festival

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2006 Ngarrgooroon Country, Hector Janday and Charlene Carrington, Raft Artspace, Darwin
2004   Charlene Carrington Solo Show, Span Galleries, Melbourne in conjunction with Seva Frangos

2002 Kintolai Gallery in conjunction with the Adelaide International Festival of Arts, Adelaide

Selected Group Exhibitions

1994   Maintaining Family Tradition, Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide
1995   Kids of Warmun, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide
1999   East Kimberley Art Awards, Kununurra
           Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne
           Hogarth Galleries, Sydney
           Karen Brown Gallery, Darwin
2000   Bett Gallery, Hobart
           Hogarth Galleries, Sydney
2001   Fireworks Gallery, Brisbane
           Ochre Show, Short Street Gallery, Broome
           Short on Size, Short Street Gallery, Broome
2002   Recent Works from Warmun, Framed Gallery, Darwin
           Thornquest Gallery, Southport
           Warmun Group Show, Bett Gallery, Hobart
           Garmerrun: All Our Country, Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide
2003   East Kimberley Show, Short Street Gallery, Broome
           Ngarrgoorroon, Yiyili and Yarrunga - Four Artists from Warmun, Hogarth Galleries, Sydney
           Six Warmun Women Painting Country, Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs
           Waterhole, Raft Artspace, Sydney
2004   Body of Art, Raft Artspace, Darwin
           Die inneren und die äußeren Dinge, Bamberg, Germany (with Aboriginal Art Gallery Bähr, Speyer)
           Women's Figurative Show, Short Street Gallery, Broome, WA
          The Next Generation: Balgo And Warmun, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne
2005 20th Telstra Aboriginal & Torres Straight Islander National Art Award, Darwin
          Warmun Women, Alcaston Gallery, Fitzroy
          Gija - Across The Border, Raft Artspace, Darwin, NT
2006 Women from Texas Downs, Gadfly Gallery, Dalkeith, Perth, WA
          Warmun Art Centre Presents, Mary Place Gallery, Sydney, NSW

Selected Collections

Artbank
Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide
Art Gallery of Western Australia

ArtTrust - Featured Artist - Willy Tjungurrayi

2011-05-28T04:52:00.000-07:00

Artist

Willy Tjungurrayi

Artwork

Snake Dreaming

Created Year: 2005
Medium: Acrylic (Synthetic Polymer)
Genre: Aboriginal
Size: 205 × 120cm
Investment Grade: Blue Chip
Colour Palette: Neutrals
Catalogue: ABWT140RC

Certified Valuation

$40,000.00

View Certificate

Sale Price

$39,000.00

Buy Now

One of the most sought after painters of the Western Desert, Willy Tjungurrayi is a senior Pintupi man, entitled by his ancestry and communal position to paint the sacred and secret Tingari cycle. The brother of respected painters Brandy and George "Hairbrush" Tjungarrayi and the late Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi, Willy Tjungurrayi was born about 1936 at Patjantja, southwest of Lake Mackay in the Northern Territory. He came in to Haast's Bluff in 1956 with other Pintupi people, and began painting for Papunya Tula Artists back in 1976. By the 1980s Willy was recognized as a senior Pintupi painter, and he joined the movement of return to the Pintupi homelands.
Stories from the Tingari Dreaming song cycle, and the land around Haast's Bluff, Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) and Kaakuratintja (Lake MacDonald), are Willy Tjungarrayi's two great linked themes. For some subjects Willy paints dozens of dotted roundels (concentric circles), linked by parallel lines, the spaces between them filled with bright, flat primary and mixed colours, a depiction of the travels and stopping places of the Tingari Men, an image of the rhythmic repetition of the songs associated with the Tjukurpa (Creation era or Dreaming).
More recently, hundreds of endless wavy lines in an ochre monochrome shimmer across the canvas on a pale background. These paintings illustrate (or witness, might be more correct) the sandhills and the fierce hailstorm that killed the ancestral Tingari Men in the Dreamtime.
Willy Tjungarrayi's work is much sought after, and has been collected into many major private and public collections.

Selected Collections:

Aboriginal Art Museum, The Netherlands.
Artbank, Sydney.
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra.
The Holmes a Court Collection, Perth.
The Kelton Foundation, Santa Monica, U.S.A.

Selected Exhibitions:

2004 Papunya Tula Artists 2004: Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; Australian Aboriginal Art Collector's Exhibition, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne.

2003 Kintore Kiwirrkura 2003: Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne.

1994 Central Australian Aboriginal Art and Craft Exhibition, Araluen Centre, Alice Springs; Yiribana, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

1991 The Painted Dream: Contemporary Aboriginal Paintings from the Tim and Vivien Johnson Collection, Auckland City Art Gallery and Te Whare Taonga o Aoteroa National Art Gallery, New Zealand.

1989 Aboriginal Art: The Continuing Tradition, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

1988 Australian Aboriginal Graphics from the Collection of the Flinders University Art Museum.

1987 Art and Aboriginality, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, UK.

1985 Dot and Circle, a retrospective survey of the Aboriginal acrylic paintings of Central Australia, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne.

1983 Papunya: paintings from the Central Australian Desert, touring exhibition, America and Europe.

1982 Georges Gallery, Melbourne; Brisbane Festival; Mori Gallery, Sydney.

Bibliography:

Butler, R., 1986: 'From dreamtime to machine time,' Imprint 21(3-4), 10. (C)

Crocker, A. (ed.), 1981: Mr Sandman Bring Me a Dream, Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, Alice Springs and Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd, Sydney. (C)

Johnson, V.,1987: Art and Aboriginality, exhib. cat., Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, UK

Kean, J., 1993: Yarnangu Ngaanya at PICA, FAR, June/July 1993

Johnson, V., 1994: The Dictionary of Western Desert Artists, Craftsman House, East Roseville. (C)

Maughan, J., and Zimmer, J., (eds), 1986: Dot and Circle, a Retrospective Survey of the Aboriginal Acrylic Paintings of Central Australia, exhib. cat., Communication Services Unit, RMIT, Melbourne. (C)

Neale, M., 1994: Yiribana, exhib. cat., Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

Kreczmanski, Janusz B, and Birnberg, Margo: Aboriginal Artists: Dictionary of Biographies, JB Publishing, Marleston, 2004

Ken Watson in Papunya Tula Genesis and Genius, Hetti Perkins and Hannah Fink (eds.), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2000

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