Ray James Tjangala

Painted for Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs in 2006 (catalogue number RJ0605117)

Private Collection, New South Wales, acquired from the above in 2006

The son of Anatjari Tjampitjinpa (circa 1927-99) one of the original painters at Papunya in the early 1970s, Ray James Tjangala made a tentative start to painting in 1987 while living at Walungurra (Kintore) however it was not until he moved to Kiwirkurra in the 1990s that he blossomed as an artist. He was closely related to another of artist of the first group of painters, Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi (circa 1924-98) whose influence appears in his paintings.

The site of Yunala is Ray James’s birthplace where in the Tjukurrpa a group of Tingari ancestors nourished themselves on the edible roots of the silky pear or bush banana (Marsdenia australis), also known as yunala. In a breathtaking stroke of abstraction, Tjangala’s paintings of the site capture the undulating rhythms of vast stretches of desert sand dunes linked to the subterranean world where ancestral energies lie, connected as it were, through the roots of yunala. For two related paintings from 1998 and 1999 in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, see 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, pp. 152-153