John & Barbara Wilkerson

Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula

Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa, 1972

Synthetic polymer paint on composition board

31 ¾ x 29 ¾ inches (80.65 x 75.57 cm)

Photo: Tony De Camillo for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University

Luritja Language Group

Provenance

The Artist, painted at Stuart Art Centre, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, August 1972

Stuart Art Centre, Alice Springs, Northern Territory

Tim Guthrie Collection, Melbourne

Sotheby's, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 30 June 1997, lot 15

Private Collection, Melbourne

Sotheby's, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 26 and 27 June 2000, lot 70

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

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

Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu (Past and Present Together): Contemporary Aboriginal Painting from the Australian Desert, Brigham Young University Museum of Art, 18 July – 6 December, 2025; Grey Art Museum at New York University, 22 January – 11 April, 2026; Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at University of Oklahoma, 26 September, 2026 – April 2027

60 over 50: 60 Paintings from 50 Years of Australian First Nations Art, UOVO, New York, May 2023

Publications

Sotheby's, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 30 June 1997, p. 16-17

Sotheby's, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 26 June 2000, p.58-59

Hetti Perkins and Hannah Fink, Papunya Tula: Genesis And Genius, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2000, p. 63, 281 (illus.)

Geoffrey Bardon and James Bardon, Papunya, A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2004, p. 168, painting 76

Benjamin Genocchio, Dollar Dreaming: Inside the Aboriginal Art World, Hardie Grant: Melbourne, 2008, p. 15 (illus.), p. 112-16

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

Vanessa Merlino and Luke Scholes, 60 over 50: 60 Paintings from 50 Years of Australian First Nations Art, UOVO, 2023, p. 46-47 (illus.)

John Kean, Dot Circle & Frame, Perth: Upswell Publishing, 2023

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

“Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa is perhaps the pinnacle of Warangkula’s early oeuvre. The unusually large surface area of this board provided Warangkula with a rare opportunity to explore ideas and techniques he had been developing throughout 1972. Beneath his delicately dotted overlays lies a myriad of iconography and design that relates to the presence and actions of the ancestral being Winpa. At Kalipinypa, Winpa sang and repeatedly clapped his boomerangs, thereby conjuring a huge storm into being. Between clashes of lightning and thunder, rain and hail fell upon the desert floor, causing catastrophic flooding. The linear patterning evokes the movement of branches, leaves and grasses carried by the sweeping floods. Among Warangkula’s highly textured surface, Winpa’s ovoid-shaped ceremonial objects meld subtly into the shifting geography.” (Vanessa Merlino and Luke Scholes, 60 over 50: 60 Paintings from 50 Years of Australian First Nations Art, 2023, p. 46)

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