Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri

Commissioned by Andrew Crocker, Papunya Tula Artists manager between 1980 - 1981

Anthony and Beverley Knight, Melbourne

Acquired from the above by the present owner with the assistance of Tim Klingender Fine Art, Sydney, in 2019

Rosemary Crumlin (ed.), Aboriginal Art and Spirituality, North Blackburn, Victoria, 1991, p. 86, pl. 52

Bernhard Lüthi (ed.), Aratjara, Art of the First Australians: Traditional and contemporary works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, Cologne, 1993, p. 258, pl. 104.

Hetti Perkins, "Stealing Time", in 12th Biennale of Sydney [exhibition catalogue], Sydney, 2000, p. 14

The High Court of Australia, Canberra, Aboriginal Art and Spirituality, February 27 - March 14, 1991; additional venues:

The Exhibition Gallery, The Waverley Centre, Melbourne, March 24 - May 5, 1991

The Art Gallery of Ballarat, May 24 - July, 1991

Kunstsammlung, Düsseldorf, Aratjara: Art of the First Australians, April 24 - July 4, 1993; additional venues:

Hayward Gallery, London, July 23 - October 10, 1993

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, February 11 - May 23, 1994

Old Parliament House, Canberra, Second National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Art Award, December 15, 1994 - January 22, 1995

Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 12th Biennale of Sydney, May 26 - July 30, 2000

While there is no recorded documentation of this painting, the imagery may relate to the Dreaming chronicle of two Tingari ancestors caught in hailstorms at the site of Karraltingi. The tall, narrow shape of the canvas is comparable to, but larger than, paintings made in the very first years of the acrylic painting movement at Papunya, in the early 1970s, when artists made painting supports from discarded sections of building materials. These early elongated boards were referred to as ‘panel paintings.’ In turn, the proportions of panel paintings have affinities with those of the elongated ovoid forms of a desert shields and ritual objects which artists were accustomed to painting in traditional circumstances.