Charlie Tarawa (Tjaruru) Tjungurrayi
The Trial, 1972
Synthetic polymer paint on composition board
29 ¹⁵⁄₁₆ x 15 ⅞ inches (76.04 x 40.32 cm)
Photo: Tony De Camillo for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
Provenance
The Artist, painted at Alice Springs, Northern Territory
Stuart Art Centre, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, consignment 19, painting 236, cat. no. 19236
Private Collection, France
Sotheby's, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 26 July 2004, lot 96
Collection of John and Barbara Wilkerson, New York
Exhibitions
Charlie Tjaruru Tjungarrayi, A Retrospective 1970-1986, Orange Regional Gallery, New South Wales, 1987; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; The Ivan Dougherty Gallery, City Art Institute, Sydney; New England Regional Art Museum, South Hill; University Art Museum, University of Queensland, Brisbane; Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs; Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
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
Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art, The Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, 30 September 2011- 12 February 2012; Musee du quai Branly, Paris, France, 9 October 2012- 20 January 2013
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
Australian Consulate-General New York, Official Consul General Residence, New York, 5 October 2021 - 20 October 2022
60 over 50: 60 Paintings from 50 Years of Australian First Nations Art, UOVO, New York, May 2023
Publications
Andrew Crocker, Charlie Tjaruru Tjungarrayi, A Retrospective 1970-1986, Orange: Orange City Council, 1987
Sotheby's, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 26 July 2004, p. 78
Vanessa Merlino and Luke Scholes, 60 over 50: 60 Paintings from 50 Years of Australian First Nations Art, UOVO, 2023, p. 48-49 (illus.)
Fred Myers, and Terry Smith, Six Paintings from Papunya: A Conversation, Durham: Duke University Press, 2024
Thomas Connors, The Magazine Antiques, Cultural Crossings, July/August 2025, p. 130-141
"The painting’s central black circle surrounds a set of concentric circles, a form often used by Pintupi in ceremonies, body decoration, rock art, and sand drawings, but which in this case is identified with something trapped inside, surrounded and enclosed. At the top and bottom, the two lines in white of semicircles, are men (“elders,” according to Pat Hogan), sitting in “council,” in judgment of the transgressor. In other depictions of Tjitururrnga, Wartuma sometimes explained the iconography of “rocks” or “hills” (puli) around the edges of the painting as “all the men.” We must understand that the painting is not only a representation of a story but also of a place whose features were formed by the story and whose features, in another sense, also tell the story for those who would understand."(Fred Myers, Ways of Looking at Western Desert Paintings, written for Two Collections. Read more here)
Related artworks
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Charlie Tarawa (Tjararu) Tjungurrayi, An Audience with the Queen, 1989 -
Charlie Tarawa (Tjaruru) Tjungurrayi, Moon Love Dreaming of Man and Woman – Medicine Story, 1971
