Pepai Jangala Carroll

Ernabella Arts, South Australia, Ernabella Arts catalogue number 531-19

Harvey Art Projects, Sun Valley

Private Collection

Harvey Art Projects, Sun Valley, Pepai Jangala Carroll, March 12 - April 31, 2020

The inspiration for this work emerged during a journey Pepai Jangala Carroll took into the far reaches of the Western Desert in April 2017. For Pepai it was a return to the country of his grandmother and father, a tract of desert he had not visited since childhood.

Like many Pintupi people of his generation, Pepai was born at the former ration station of Haasts Bluff. Pepai’s father, a Pintupi man, Henry Paripata Tjampitjinpa and his Pitjantjatjara mother, Nancy (Anpulyura) Napangati, spent time living in Hassts Bluff before moving briefly to Areyonga and then Papunya. For a time Paripata was a dingo scalper and travelled long distances collecting their pelts which he sold to support his growing family. On one such trip in the 1950s Pepai accompanied his father to visit Paripata’s birthplace at Ininti. A few years after this trip came the unexpected death of his mother which resulted in Pepai and his siblings being sent a long distance south to live with relatives at Ernabella. Paripata remained in Papunya but tragically passed a short time later. A devastated Pepai remained at Ernabella and when old enough began work as a carpenter on a nearby sheep station. He married Alison Milyika Carroll and together they raised five children. Pepai worked in a variety of jobs before serving a twenty-year career as the Ernabella Community Constable which he retired from in 2007. Retirement did not sit well, and soon after Pepai took to painting and then ceramics, not surprisingly relying on Paripata’s country as his immediate source of inspiration. Pepai quickly established himself as a stalwart at Ernabella Arts. As his artistic practice flourished so too did a desire to revisit the country he had experienced so fleetingly as a child.

With the support of family and friends, Pepai devised a plan to travel to the country far west of Haasts Bluff that fate had taken him away from. Pepai was also determined to connect with senior Pintupi men who he hoped could bridge the personal, social and cultural gap that had persisted since his last visit. As an elderly man enmeshed in a patriarchal society that values knowledge of Country above almost all else, Pepai’s journey into the relative unknown was profoundly brave. It takes a rare human to knowingly position oneself so vulnerable amongst their peers, but such was the measure of this unassuming man.

Pepai’s actions were immediately justified by the warm reception he received from the senior men who welcomed him at Walungurru (Kintore), 500kms west of Alice Springs. Many were inspired by his impassioned quest for knowledge and in awe of the effort it had taken for him to journey so far. Pepai sat solemnly, listening with intent, absorbing the details of the impressive lineage of Tjampitjinpa’s and Tjangala’s who spoke for this country before and after the establishment of settlements and missions. It was during this visit that Pepai acquired the knowledge that informs Walungurru 2019 which tells the story of an ancestral wanampi (rainbow snake or serpent) that travelled nearby in search of a man who had transgressed Aboriginal cultural law.

Pepai continued his journey to Ininti where an abandoned outstation sits nestled between glorious sandhills that cannon into a nearby escarpment of ancient rock. On arriving Pepai felt a rush of memory and spoke of his family travelling and living in this Country prior to contact:

‘They would all stay here, just the family. They stayed here without anything [bore, power etc.], no house, they stayed at the soakage, this water is the soakage.’

His travels continued to Kiwirrkura where Pepai spent valuable time with his classificatory father Jimmy Brown Tjampitjinpa and then onto the giant salt-lake of Wilkinkarra. Upon arrival Pepai hurried toward its shimmering expanse and revelled in its absorbing presence. Rather than merely observe where he has come to be, Pepai stepped onto a chalky crust of fused salt and sand and began his trek inward. He roamed alone for over an hour, stepping past sulphur encrusted scorpions, frogs, lizards and birds. Soon his dark clad figure was a distant and tiny blemish against a glowing horizon. As the sun began to fade and the colours of the surrounds yellowed and darkened, he returned to camp with no words though a piercing twinkle in his eye.

The subsequent body of work inspired by this journey established Pepai Jangala Carroll’s reputation as an illuminating painter and maverick ceramist. His untimely death in 2021 occurred just as his work began to be included in major exhibitions in Australia and internationally.

Luke Scholes