Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri *

(born in Kiwirrkura in 1958)
Untitled, 2009, with artist’s name, measurement and Papunya Tula artists catalogue no. WT0906052 on the overlap, acrylic on canvas, 153 x 183 cm

Provenance:
Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs
Salon 94, New York
Private Collection, Germany (acquired from the above in 2014)

Exhibited:
Museum für Moderne Kunst, Weserburg, Mir ist das Leben Lieber - I prefer life. Sammlung Reydan Weiss, May 19, 2018, exhib. cat. Heidelberg 2017, p. 191, p. 148/149 with full page col. ill.

Literature:
George Tjemgurrayi, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, Melbourne, 2014

Until the age of twenty, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri lived with his family, members of the Pintupi people, in complete isolation in a remote part of the Western Desert in Australia. The family of nine were the last Aboriginal group known to be living according to traditional ways between the waterholes near Lake Mackay, on the border between Western Australia and the Northern Territory, in the Gibson Desert. It was not until 1984 that they first made contact with other Aboriginal people—and with the Western world—while searching for relatives. The sudden appearance of this group attracted considerable national and international press attention. For a country still wrestling with its complex sense of identity, this event was both a marvel and an uncomfortable reminder of the enduring connection between the Indigenous peoples and their land.

Influenced by contact with contemporary Australia and by the Papunya Tula Artists Cooperative, an Aboriginal-run organisation, Warlimpirrnga began painting with acrylics on canvas in 1987. In a distinctly minimalist style, his works depict forms and structures associated with the great salt lake Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), the region where he spent his youth. These configurations are visual transcriptions of his lived stories. The pulse and radiance of his paintings serve as a visual metaphor for Tjukurrpa (Dreaming), the ancestral force believed by the Pintupi to permeate all existence. His paintings oscillate, vibrate and seem to hover like electromagnetic fields between the surface of the canvas and the viewer’s gaze. Their illusion of motion produces an extraordinary energetic intensity that can be felt physically and immediately.

The manner in which the lines and curves narrate their stories remains largely enigmatic. “I have asked this question for forty years and have never received the same answer twice—it is very confidential knowledge,” observed Fred R. Myers, anthropologist at New York University, who has studied the Pintupi and their art since the early 1970s and, as a doctoral researcher, helped draw attention to the Papunya Tula Artists Cooperative. “The paintings operate more as mnemonic devices than as depictions of a narrative.”