JOHNNY WARANGKULA TJUPURRULA

Painted at Papunya in 1972
Stuart Art Centre, Alice Springs
Private collection (acquired from the above)

The painting is in remarkably good condition with the pigments bright and stable. The top right hand corner has been broken at some point and restoration over a 20mm squared area has been carried out. There is a fine/ indent in the surface pigment running through near the centre right hand side of the painting.
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Cf. For similar and related works by the artist see A Bush Tucker Story, 1972, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa, 1972, and Rain Dreaming at Kalipinypa, 1973, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. These three works are illustrated in Perkins, H. and H. Fink (eds.), Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2000, at pages p.60, p.63 and p.65 respectively.

In 1972, Warangkula produced several spectacular atmospheric images of the landscape at Kalipinypa, a major Water Dreaming place some 350 kilometres west of Alice Springs, over which he had ancestrally inherited authority. These paintings celebrate the richness of natural resources; the bush foods growing profusely in a landscape inundated by the fertilising rains of the wet season. They feature references to the wild raisin kampurrarpa (Solanum-centrale) which grows prolifically in the area and with which the artist had a totemic association, emphasising his personal connection to this country.

The surfaces of these paintings are themselves inundated by fields of overlapping dots and stippling to produce images of great visual intensity and shifting subtleties. In Water and Bush Tucker Story, 1972, the graphic elements that form the composition are subsumed in the swirls of colour and rhythmical marks. It is possible, however, to discern in the underpainting, Warangkula's variation on the conventional iconography for images of Rain Dreamings - the chain of intertwining lines that meander down the middle of the painting. The design is a visual pun for it also can be interpreted as the patterns of the root growth of the plants. The composition is enclosed by a series of parallel scalloped lines representing water streaming down the cliff faces and across the landscape. The atmosphere of a land covered in torrential rain and clouds carried by the wind, punctuated by bolts of lightning and thunder, is emphasised by Warangkula's use of white. The white lends the image a sense of permeability that reflects the presence of ancestral forces within the landscape.

In the second year of the establishment of the Papunya Tula Artists cooperative, artists were beginning to get a better understanding of the nature of their relationship with their audience. The drive to eliminate secret iconography in works destined for the public domain had resulted, among some artists, in the use of fields of dotting, to mask, in a conceptual way, the graphic elements deemed to be secret. The effect was the production of paintings that speak directly to the senses. Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri's Bushfire 1, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, is one of the earliest and most renowned examples (in Perkins and Fink, 2000, p.74). The paintings made by Warangkula in this vein in 1972 include A Bush Tucker Story and Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa (see also Sotheby's, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 26 June 2000, lot 70), mentioned above. Other related works by the artist from the same year are Water Theft at Tjikarri, Water Dreaming for Women and Girls, and Children's Bush Tucker Dreaming in Bardon, G. and J. Bardon, Papunya, A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2004, p.268, ptg.196, p.374, ptg.328, and p.481, ptg.461 respectively, illus.

This painting is sold with accompanying Stuart Art Centre documentation, catalogue number 1272149