Fred Ward Tjungurrayi

Painted for Kayili Artists, Patjarr, Western Australia, in 2006 (catalogue number K06-177)

Private Collection, Darwin, acquired from the above

William Mora Galleries, Melbourne, Kayili Artists, November 14 - December 8, 2006

Fred Ward Tjungurrayi is a Pintupi artist who first painted for the Papunya Tula Artists cooperative while living at Kiwirrkura in 1985. He moved to Warburton in Ngaanyatjarra country in Western Australia where he was represented by Kayili Arts at Patjarr (now closed) and Warakurna Artists. In 1989, Tjungurrayi won the Northern Territory Art Award and his Tingari Men’s travels at Kiwirrkura, 1990, featured on the cover of the catalogue of the major survey exhibition Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2000.¹

Milimilpa, 2006, is from a series of paintings by Tjungurrayi that relate the travels of the Tingari ancestors from the coastal areas far to the northwest, around the modern towns of Port Hedland and Broome in Western Australia, where pearl shell pendants are made. The pendants usually feature incised parallel zig-zag, meander and interlocking key designs akin to those in Tjungurrayi’s painting. The incised lines are filled with red ochre and relate to the life-giving properties of water in its various forms – rain, storms, clouds, rivers and tides. The lustrous nacre of pearl shell is analogous to the shimmering scales of ubiquitous ancestral Rainbow Serpents and is regarded as a manifestation of their supernatural powers. Pearl shells are used for rain-making purposes and in ceremonies and are worn as adornments attached by hair string. Decorated and plain pearl shells are of great value and have moved along centuries old trade routes far inland, including across the western and central deserts of the continent.²

¹ Perkins, H. and H. Fink [eds.], Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, in association with Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, 2000, cover and p.119.

² For a study of the making and use of pearl shell, see Akerman, K., with J. E. Stanton, Riji and Jakuli: Kimberley pearl shell in Aboriginal Australia, Northern Territory Museum of Arts and Sciences, Darwin, 1994.