Timmy Payungka Tjapangati

Painted at Papunya for Papunya Tula Artists in 1972

Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne

Imants Tillers and Jenny Slate, New South Wales, acquired from the above in the 1980s

Timmy Payungka Tjapangati was a ceremonial leader with extensive ancestral knowledge who joined the original group of painters at Papunya in 1971. While his early paintings on board are well known, Untitled (Ceremony), 1972, is fresh to the market. The painting has been separated from its original documentation, however it is inscribed on the reverse ‘Tim Jabanardi’ – one of the spellings used at the time. In the early years, Geoffrey Bardon, the first manager of the Papunya Tula Artists cooperative variously recorded the artist’s name as Timmy Pyunga, Timmy Pyunga Tjabanardi and Timmy Tjapangati.

While we are left to surmise on the detail of the painting, several elements feature in related works by the artist. The composition focusses on two roundels at the centre of the painting; adjacent are U-shapes that usually depict people seated on the ground. In combination these elements may refer to a ceremonial site, with a central camp and ground painting. The two back-to-back arcs in red at the upper centre right are separated by an oval form that seems to depict a shield, viewed from the back with the handle visible.

The meandering sets of lines in the upper register are likely to refer to running water, both in the form of rain and ground water, all converge on the upper roundel. From here, two dotted arcs joining the horizontal dividing the image suggest a cave, a geological feature that recurs in the paintings of Timmy Payungka Tjapangati. Caves are significant as repositories of sacred objects as is suggested in the artist’s Cave Story, painted in November 1971 in the John and Barbara Wilkerson Collection.¹

The prominent elements in the lower register of the painting are series decorated oval forms that are linked together, possibly images of bull-roarers thus supporting the ceremonial theme. Areas of stippling and dotting usually refer to bush foods which are likely to be plentiful after rain.

Below the horizontal are the tracks of the ancestral Kangaroo and Possum on the left, and of the Kangaroo on the right, dragging its tail along the ground, as they head towards the ceremonial site. Kangaroo tracks leading to a site of ritual also appear in the stylistically similar Big corroboree, also from 1972.² The combination of kangaroo and possum tracks appears in the uppermost section of Tjapangati’s famous later canvas, Kangaroo and Shield People Dreaming at Lake Mackay, 1980, that featured in the ground-breaking exhibition Dreamings: The art of Aboriginal Australia, at the Asia Society Galleries in New York in 1988.³ This painting features an extended grid pattern that describes the travels of the Tingari ancestors across Pintupi land, thus implying the connection between the Kangaroo and Possum ancestors and the Tingari ritual cycle. The Possum ancestor also features in one of Tjapangati’s earliest paintings, a small irregularly-shaped board, Possum Dreaming from June-July 1971, and Possum Man’s Ceremony, 1972.⁴

^

¹ Benjamin, R and A.C. Weislogel (eds), Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, New York, 2009, pp.90-1, plate 9.

² Ryan, J, J. Kean et al, Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2011, p.196.

³ Sutton, P. (ed), Dreamings. The art of Aboriginal Australia, Melbourne and New York: Viking, in association with The Asia Society Galleries, 1988, p108, fig.148, cat. no. 57.

⁴ 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. 122, Painting 49, and p.445 respectively.