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Artworks

Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, Water and Tucker, 1972

Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula Indigenous Australian (Pintupi/Warlpiri), 1925-2001

Water and Tucker, 1972
Synthetic polymer paint on composition board
76 x 91 cm
29.9 x 35.8 inch
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity
Copyright Estate of the Artist
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In the first three years of the Papunya art movement, Johnny Warangkula produced a series of paintings of the desert landscape covered in native food plants and nourished by rain...
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In the first three years of the Papunya art movement, Johnny Warangkula produced a series of paintings of the desert landscape covered in native food plants and nourished by rain and rivers of freshwater. In mid-1972, at the time this work was created, a major topic of discussion amongst the artists in the Painting Room at Papunya was the idea of painting 'my country', that for most of the artists was quite distant from the township. These works are characterized by fields of intricate brushwork, where every section of the composition is meticulously detailed in layers of dotted and stippled paint.


Among the artist's finest works, these paintings capture the essence of the physical richness and variety of vegetation and topographical features in the landscape at a dramatic time in the seasonal cycle. Moreover, through the visually mesmerizing application of layers of color, the artist conveys the notion of the ancestral forces vivifying the landscape. This composition is an elaboration on the conventional desert iconography for Rain or Water Dreamings: two sets of concentric circles, representing fresh waterholes, joined by a series of meandering lines to represent flowing water. The footprints of the Water Ancestor appear in the lower left quadrant while the black area in the lower right represents a clay pan.


Please note that all First Nations Art is created from a so called ‘Birds Eye’ view. This means that the paintings can be hung either horizontally as well as vertically.

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Provenance

Painted at Papunya, Australia
Stuart Art Centre, Alice Springs, Australia
Private collection, Vancouver, Canada
Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, Australia. 25-07-2005, lot 158

The Austcorp Group Limited Art Collection, Australia

Private collection, The Netherlands

Exhibitions

Tjukkurtjanu; Origins of Western Desert Art, Musée du quai Branly, Paris, France, 2012-2013
Tjukkurtjanu; Origins of Western Desert Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, 2011-2012

Selections from the Austcorp Group Limited Collection of Aboriginal Art, New Australian Art exhibition series, The Deloitte Foundation, Sydney, Australia 2007

Literature

Benjamin, R., Weislogel, A. C., Icons of The Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, New York, 2009, p.21, illustrated in the background of a photograph of the Men's Painting Room at Papunya taken in 1972

 

Bardon, G., Bardon, J., Papunya, A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2004, p.429, painting 394


Ryan, J., Batty, P., Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne: Council of Trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria, 2011, p.274

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