Anatjari (Yanyatjarri) Tjakamarra Ngaatjatjarra/Pintupi, circa 1930-1992
Yarranyanga, 1989
Synthetic polymer paint on linen
59 ¾ x 48 inches (151.77 x 121.92 cm)
Photo: Tony De Camillo for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
Provenance
The Artist, painted at Kiwirrkurra, Western Australia, 1989
Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, cat. no. AT890465
Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne
Private Collection, Melbourne
Sotheby's, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 26 July, 2004, lot 108
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, 12 September - 12 December, 2015
Publications
Sotheby's, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 26 July, 2004, p. 92 - 93
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. 166-167 (illus.)
The Papunya Tula Artists certificate reads:
The site of Yarranyanga, a claypan with a number of small rockholes in sandhill country
to the south of Kintore, near Tjukula is depicted in this work. In ancestral times a group
Tingari Men traveled through this area before continuing east.
to the south of Kintore, near Tjukula is depicted in this work. In ancestral times a group
Tingari Men traveled through this area before continuing east.
Because of the secret/sacred nature of events associated with the Tingari Cycle, no further detail was given. Generally, the Tingari are a group of ancestors who traveled over vast stretches of the country, performing rituals and creating and shaping particular sites. The Tingari men were usually followed by Tingari women and accompanied by novices and their travels and adventures are enshrined in a number of song-cycles. These mythologies form part of the teachings of the post-initiate youths today as well as providing explanations for contemporary events.
As the 2004 sale catalogue notes, this work is “closely related to many of the works in [Anatjari Tjakamarra’s] solo exhibition, 1989 at the John Weber Gallery, New York, from which Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired ‘Tingari Cycle Dreaming’; the first contemporary work of Aboriginal art to enter the Museum’s collection.”
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