Anatjari (Yanyatjarri) Tjakamarra Ngaatjatjarra/Pintupi, circa 1930-1992
Pakarangura, 1972
Synthetic polymer/powder paint on composition board
23.9 x 17.8 inches (60.8 x 45.4 cm)
Photo: Tony De Camillo for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
Provenance
The Artist, painted at Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, with documentation by Peter Fannin, consignment #A19081
Private Collection, Canberra
Sotheby's, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 29 June, 1998, lot. 233
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
Publications
Sotheby's, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 29 June, 1998, p. 115
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. 190
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. 134-135 (illus.)
Peter Fannin’s certificate titles the work Pakarangura, which he notes "is in Tjakamarra’s country S. of Sandy Blight.” His diagram interprets the central roundel as “water and cave,” the four large oval forms as “water tjuringas,” and “the background arcs” as “decoration.” The striped line entering the picture from the sides and traveling to the roundel identified as “kulpi.” Fannin writes, “The corroboree at this site seems to be a water dreaming. I was unable to get the meaning for kulpi.” (Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya, p. 135)
