WARLIMPIRRNGA TJAPALTJARRI | MARAWA

Painted at Kiwirrkurra,Western Australia in 2012 for Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, Northern Territory

Private collection, Perth

In 1984 Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, a maparntjarra or ritual healer, led a small family group into the Pintupi settlement of Kiwirrkurra in the Gibson Desert. It was first time the group had experienced non-Aboriginal conditions, and where they came face to face with kartiya (people of European descent). Nearly thirty years later Warlimpirrnga’s paintings were on show at dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, and Salon 94 in New York City mounted an exhibition of his work under the title Maparntjarra.

At Kiwirrkurra, Warlimpirrnga served his painting apprenticeship under two established artists, both close relatives; George Tjungurrayi (born c.1947) and George Tjampu Tjapaltjarri (c.1945-2005, see Lot 28). His first solo exhibition at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in 1988 was donated in full to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.¹ By 2000, his Dingo Dreaming of 1988 was included in the ground-breaking exhibition Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.² 

Warlimpirrnga’s inspiration and the subject of his paintings is the country he traversed through the early part of his life around the salt lake of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) in the very heart of the Australian continent. True to the tenets of Pintupi art, rather than merely depict the land, Warlimpirrnga’s canvases teem with a visual dynamic that pulsates to evoke the sacred powers of the supernatural creators, the Tingari, who established Pintupi law and ritual. The designs in his pictures relate to those incised into ceremonial pearl shells that form an essential part of the maparntjarra’s equipment. While pearl shells originate from the coastal regions far to the northwest, they are traded along well-established traditional exchange routes for thousands of miles across the continent, reaching far into the desert regions of western and central Australia, and beyond.

1. The works were donated by the collectors the late Ron Castan AM QC and Nellie Castan.

2. Dingo Dreaming, 1988, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, is illustrated in Perkins, H. and H. Fink (eds), Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales in association with Papunya Tula Artists, Sydney, 2000, p. 102.

Wally Caruana