TJUMPO TJAPANANGKA CIRCA 1929-2007 | Wati Kutjarra

Painted in 2004 for Warlayirti Artists, Wirrimanu (Balgo Hills), Western Australia
Private Collection
Bonhams, Important Australian Art, Melbourne, 20 August 2013, lot 127
The Dennis and Debra Scholl Collection, Miami

Nevada, Nevada Museum of Art, No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting, 13 February to 13 May 2015, and additional venues:
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, 20 June to 16 August 2015
Pérez Art Museum, Miami, 17 September 2015 to 3 January 2016
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, 18 January to 15 May 2016
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, New York, 9 June to 14 August 2016

Henry F. Skerritt, ed. et al, No Boundaries: Australian Aboriginal Contemporary Abstract Painting, Prestel Verlag, Munich-London-New York, 2014, p.151, p.161 (illus.)

Bears Warlayirti Artists catalogue number 218/04 on reverse. Synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen on stretcher, unframed. The work appears to be in excellent condition overall with no visible evidence of repair or restoration. Please note this work has not been examined under ultraviolet light.
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The searing heat that emanates from this canvas is a measure of Tumpo Tjanpangka’s genius. It is achieved through the simple means of alternating lines of variegated yellow and white ochre painted over a black ground that refers to "black skin, the first “canvas” of ceremonial body painting.”¹ The heat is the supernatural power of the great Wati Kutjarra, the two ancestral brothers often identified as Goanna Men who traversed the Kukatja universe bestowing culture and law upon people. The heat is simultaneously the glowering fires the brothers lit to create the salt-encrusted lake at Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), the site of Tjapanangka’s birth and upbringing. The heat is also the mirage-like shimmer of light gleaming off the rows of sand hills that are a feature of the landscape. Painted in the latter period of his life, Tjumpo Tjapanangka’s palette of yellow and white in Wati Kutjarra also relates to the colours of body patterns worn by Kukatja in mourning. For related paintings to Wati Kutjarra, 2004, by Tjumpo Tjapanangka using the same palette see Wati Kutjarra (Two Brothers Dreaming), 2004, in the Kaplan & Levi Collection;¹ and Walartu, 2003, and Wati Kutjarra, 2003, in the Laverty Collection.²

WC

1 See McCluskey, P. et al., Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art: Kaplan & Levi Collection, Seattle and New Haven: Seattle Art Museum and Yale University Press, 2012, plate 39, p.131 (illus.)

2 See Laverty, C. & E, et. al., Beyond Sacred: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Laverty Collection, Kleimeyer Industries, Melbourne, 2011, pp.146 and 147 respectively (illus.)