Kanya Tjapangati

This painting is accompanied by its original Papunya Tula Certificate. Since his untimely passing in 2006, the stylistic innovation of Kanya Tjapangati and his remarkable oeuvre remains unheralded. Largely overshadowed by Western Desert luminaries such as Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri (circa 1927-1998), and Ronnie Tjampitjinpa (born circa 1943), Kanya created paintings of controlled dynamism and integrity. However, within his home community of Kiwirrkurra, situated over 400 miles west of Alice Springs in Central Australia, his unique practice was highly revered. In the absence of many senior women artists at Kiwirrkurra, it was Kanya’s minimal aesthetic that inspired a generation of female Pintupi artists. Yukultji Napangati, Doreen Reid Nakamarra and Mantua Nangala have all, to varying extents, been influenced by Kanya’s austere paintings.

A tall, gentle, man, Kanya drew upon the ancestral narratives of his Tingarri ancestors as the basis for his artistic practice. Tingarri stories continue to form part of the teachings of post-initiatory Pintupi youths across the Western Desert regions of Central Australia. Many of Kanya’s late-career works reference the journeys the Tingarri men made across country shaping the landscape with their ceremonies, songs and activity.

Kirritjinna, 2004 is a fine late-career example of Kanya’s subtle genius. Here his use of rippling contours and shifting pigments evoke the seen, and unseen, patterns of the Australian desert. Viewed from afar, his use of repetitious line, and depiction of space, captures the vast landscapes of the desert interior. Up close, however, his gently serrated lines, applied with the chewed end of the eucalyptus twig, hum with deceptive intensity.

Luke Scholes

Luke Scholes is former curator of Aboriginal art at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. He has curated multiple award-winning exhibitions and written extensively about Aboriginal art.