Mick Namararri Tjapaltjarri Pintupi Language Group, c. 1926-August 16, 1998
Provenance
The Artist, painted at Alice Springs, Northern Territory, late 1971
Stuart Art Centre, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, consignment 10, painting 17, cat. no. 10017
Private Collection, Melbourne
Sotheby's, Melbourne, Fine Aboriginal and Contemporary Art, 17 June 1996, lot 38
Collection of John and Barbara Wilkerson, New York
Exhibitions
Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya, The Herbert F Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 10 January - 5 April 2009; Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles, 3 May - 2 August, 2009; Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, 1 September - 5 December, 2009
Abstraction & the Dreaming: Aboriginal Paintings from Australia’s Western Desert (1971 – Present), Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Utah, 11 September - 12 December 2015
60 over 50: 60 Paintings from 50 Years of Australian First Nations Art, UOVO, New York, May 2023
Publications
Bardon, Geoffrey, and James Bardon. Papunya, A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement. The Miegunyah Press, 2004, p. 232, painting 146.
Benjamin, Roger, Fred Myers, Vivien Johnson, et al. Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya. Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, 2009, pp. 94–95
Merlino, Vanessa, and Luke Scholes. 60 over 50: 60 Paintings from 50 Years of Australian First Nations Art. UOVO, 2023 (illus.)
Sotheby's. Fine Aboriginal and Contemporary Art. Melbourne, 17 June 1996, p. 19.
"There is agreeable spareness and simplicity about this work. With his minimal tracks of white dots, Namararri is able to activate the entire rectangle of the board. Despite the visual focus being the bold red-ochre sandhill motif. Within a year, Mick Namararri had developed this elemental design into a magnificent richness of overlapping arcs forming arabesques and fish-scale patterns, rendered in minute white dots over a salmon ground."
— Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya, 2009, p. 94-95