Timmy Payungka Tjapangati

Timmy Payungka Tjapangati was the most graceful of the Pintupi artists. He had the gait of a man who could cover many miles with minimal effort - appearing to float over the earth.

In 1957, Tjapangati was living with his family in the vicinity of Wilkinkarra (Lake McKay) the great saltpan, when the quietly spoken Patrol Officer Jeremy Long approached.

"With the help of our Aboriginal guides, we found a family living near the West Australian border. It was early November and very hot. The people were resting in the shade when we walked into their camp. Alarmed at first at our sudden, unheralded approach, the two men settled to talk…

We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening talking with the men and cooking and eating the kangaroo that we had shot that morning—a rare treat in this region. The well, Yarannga, was deep, and in the damp sand at the bottom, three dingo pups were asleep. I remember being struck by how bright and alert the younger man’s eyes were and how extraordinarily straight his back was. Living close to nature clearly had its advantages. He offered next day to lead us to another water, Yumarri, where we might find another group. But there we saw only distant smokes to the west. This young man, later known as Tim Payungka Tjapangarti, wanted to visit his mother, who had walked into Haasts Bluff a year earlier, so we gave him a lift to the settlement [400 kilometers to the east] on our return.

The next winter I took Tim back beyond the Kintore Range so that he could rejoin his family. I remember him leaving us with a load of supplies on his head and disappearing over the sandridge."[1]

Water Dreaming (1971-72) epitomises the economy of gesture that characterised Timmy Payunka’s life as a hunter-gatherer in one of the harshest Australian deserts. According to Geoffrey Bardon’s original field notes, the barred rectangle in the middle right of the composition is rain falling from clouds. Having hit the ground the water gathers to run across the land, as signified by the sinuous lines.[2] Payunka did not regard these lines as a generalised conceptual map of desert hydrology however; rather the composition encoded the topography of a specific locale. His schematic outlines are in effect mnemonics for a section of country and its associated ceremonies and song. They also connote Payunka’s particular attachment to that country and his association through the lives of his ancestors who, like he, had observed occasional downpours from the southern flanks of monsoons that sweep across the region from the northwest. Closely observed, these rain events induce a profusion of fruit, seeds and game in the area.

The lines of this depiction also evoke the designs incised into lingkilya (pearl shell). Traded deep into the desert from the Kimberley coast, nacre from these highly prized objects of mysterious origin is used in rain making ritual. Lingkilya, like Payunka’s Water Dreaming, shine with luminous unpredictable energy.

John Kean

1 Jeremy Long, “Meeting with Strangers”, in Philip Batty, (ed.) Colliding Worlds: First contact in the Western Desert 1932-1984, Museum Victoria, Melbourne, 2006, pp. 31-33.

2 Geoffrey Bardon and James Bardon, Papunya: a place made after the story: the beginnings of the Western Desert painting movement, Carlton: Miegunyah Press, 2004, p. 204.

Cf. For an extensive discussion of the artist's early paintings see Bardon and Bardon, 2004, and Myers, F. R., Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2002. See also: Caruana, W. Aboriginal Art, World of Art Series, Thames and Hudson, London and New York, 2003; and 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.