Unidentified Artist likely Tommy Lowery Tjapaltjarri
Provenance
Purchased by Mr. and Mrs. W.L Jackson, (teachers at the Papunya School, early 1972)
Sotheby’s Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 28 June, 1999, lot 55
Collection of John and Barbara Wilkerson, New York
Exhibitions
Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 18 August - 12 November 2000
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
Publications
Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 28 June, 1999, p. 48
Hetti Perkins and Hannah Fink, Papunya Tula: Genesis And Genius, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2000, p. 12, 288
Roger Benjamin, Fred Meyers, Vivien Johnson, et al., Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya, The Herbert F Johnson Museum, Cornell University, 2009, p.83
(Forward written by John and Barbara Wilkerson)
Given the similarity in execution and materials, it seems likely this small board was also the work of Tommy Lowry Tjapaltjarri.
A diagram and annotation was provided by Geoffrey Bardon for the 1999 sale. On the diagram drawn by Frank Slip and signed by Bardon is the remark: “Painted on scrap wood–Geoff Bardon’s Art Room, Papunya, Sept. 1971.” On the verso of the diagram, Bardon notes: “The emerging design motifs for ceremonial men as a U shape, journey line and sitdown places are all apparent. It reveals the ceremonial positions for a dreaming map and is similar to ceremonial signs or motifs in actual images, on traditional objects here transposed to hardwood.” (Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya, p. 82)
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