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Artworks
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
Women’s Dreaming about Bush Tucker “Yarlga”, 1972Synthetic polymer/powder paint on composition board
25 ⅜ x 21 ⅞ inches (64.45 x 55.56 cm)
Photo: Tony De Camillo for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell UniversityAnmatyerr Language Group Provenance
The Artist, painted late 1972
Acquired at an exhibition at the house of Papunya art advisor Peter Fannin in 1973
Sotheby's, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 30 June, 1997, lot 72
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
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
Viven Johnson, The Art of Clifford Possum Tapaltjarni, Craftsman House, 1994, p. 50
Sotheby's, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 30 June, 1997, p. 53
Geoffrey Bardon and James Bardon, Papunya, A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, The Miegunyah Press: Melbourne, 2004, p. 376, painting 330
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
Fred Myers, and Terry Smith, Six Paintings from Papunya: A Conversation, Durham: Duke University Press, 2024
“The central circle is a fire with firesticks radiating in formal order where women sit opposite each other at either end of long yam sticks; the curving lines from the centre of the design represent smoke from the fire and the stippled and ragged white shapes are the bush tucker the women have gathered called ‘yarlga’, which is white and like an onion. The dotting otherwise represents the earth and bushes. The illusionism of three dimensions has Clifford’s drawn shapes overlapped by irregular forms representing bush tucker, the story as with most of Clifford’s work, having no ceremonial objects, bullroarers or any apparent connection with sacredness or secrecy.” (Papunya, A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, 2004, p. 376)Related artworks-
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Dreaming Story at Warlugulong, 1976 -
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Emu Corroboree Man, 1972
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