![Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa, Mikanji [formerly Untitled], 1971](https://artlogic-res.cloudinary.com/w_2400,h_2400,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto/ws-twocollections/usr/images/artworks/main_image/items/97/976d7d265613491ba3096503ae16b451/cat05_sup.jpg)
Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa
Mikanji [formerly Untitled], 1971
Synthetic polymer powder paint on composition board
36 x 35 ⅞ inches (91.44 x 91.12 cm)
Photo: Tony De Camillo for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
Provenance
The Artist, painted October 1971
R.C. (Dick) Kimber, acquired at the first exhibition of Papunya paintings in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, October 1971
Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 29 June, 1998, lot 21
Collection of John and Barbara Wilkerson, New York
Exhibitions
Dot and Circle, A Retrospective Survey of the Aboriginal Paintings of Central Australia, RMIT University Gallery, Melbourne, 16 April - 3 May 1985, (Cat 1)
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
Publications
Kimber, "Papunya Tula: Artists of Central and Western Deserts of Australia,” in Australian Art Review, ed. Leon Paroissien, Warner Associates, 1982 p. 122-125
Janet Maughan, Jenny Zimmer, et al., Dot and Circle: A Retrospective Survey of the Aboriginal Acrylic Painting of Central Australia, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, 1986, cat 1, p. 9, 59 (illus.)
Vivien Johnson, Dreamings of the Desert: Aboriginal Dot Paintings of the Western Desert, 1998, p. 19
Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 29 June, 1998, p. 21
Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 20 October, 2008, p. 101-102
"An October 1971 work, (it is) believed to be one of the first six paintings offered for sale in Alice Springs. An initial design, very largely obliterated when water was used to smear and remove it, exists as a ghost outline in the background. Centrally placed is a set of concentric circles in orange, white and green. All other design elements are symmetrically arranged about these circles and towards the edge of the board, and a further colour, yellow, is employed. The mirror-image designs are two bull roarers and two ceremonial poles standing up from depictions of ground paintings (all secret-sacred elements), two snakes, two sets of geometric designs and, across the base, a line of kangaroo tracks." (Zimmer and Maughan, Dot and Circle: A Retrospective Survey of the Aboriginal Acrylic Painting of Central Australia, p. 59)
![Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa, Budgerigar Dreaming (Version 1) [formerly Budgerigar Dreaming], 1972](https://artlogic-res.cloudinary.com/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto/ws-twocollections/usr/images/artworks/main_image/items/d0/d0e3a1354a0e4e8c914c97c59ae8e3ef/cat19_sup.jpg)