Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri
Bornlate 1950s
hillside east of modern-day Kiwirrkurra, Western Australia
NationalityAustralian
OccupationPainter
Years active1987 – present
OrganizationPapunya Tula
StyleWestern Desert art
SpouseYalti Napangati
Children4[1][2]
Parent(s)Waku Tjungurrayi (father)
Papalya Nangala (mother)
RelativesTopsy Napaltjarri
Takariya Napaltjarri
Piyiti Tjapaltjarri
Thomas Tjapangati
Yukultji Napangati
Walala Tjapangati

Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri (Pintupi: [waɭɪmb̥ɪr ɟab̥əɭɟari]; born late 1950s) is an Australian Aboriginal artist. He is one of central Australia's most well-known indigenous artists.

Early life

Tjapaltjarri was born in the late 1950s,[6] near Lake Mackay, east of where Kiwirrkurra is today.[4] His family were Pintupi hunter-gatherers who lived a traditional nomadic way of life on the western side of the lake, and had never come into contact with Euro-Australian society. Tjapaltjarri's father died when he was a young boy, and his mother remarried shortly after. Tjapaltjarri himself married his cousin, Yalti, sometime around 1980. He served the family's main provider of food,[7] hunting with spears, mirru (spear-throwers) and boomerangs.[3]

In 1984, when Tjapaltjarri was about 25, he finally came into contact with people from outside his family.[3] Upon seeing a white man for the first time, Tjapaltjarri remembers, "I couldn't believe it. I thought he was a devil, a bad spirit. He was the colour of clouds at sunrise."[8] A few days later, he and his family were settled at Kiwirrkurra. News of this group living nomadically so far into the modern world made headlines internationally.[3]

Painting and Style

Tjapaltjarri started painting in 1987, working with Papunya Tula.[4] Initially practicing under the tutelage of other artists at the company, he finished his first painting for them in April 1987.[1] His first public exhibition was in Melbourne, the following year. It showed eleven of his paintings, all of which were bought for the National Gallery of Victoria.[1][4] He has since become one of central Australia's most well-known artists.[3]

Tjapaltjarri paints abstract images of sacred stories and songs from his family's Dreaming. The stories focus around the Tingari, the ancestors of the Pintupi, spirit beings who are believed to have created all living things. His stories are about his country and sacred sites such as Marruwa and Kanapilya.[1][4]

Tjapaltjarri's work often includes elaborate topographical patterns that depict sacred landscapes including Lake Mackay and Marawa where his Pintupi ancestors traveled. He does so using a series of thousands of delicate concentric lines that appear to overlap each other and eventually converge to create a sense of movement and depth.[9] Tjapaltjarri's primary work uses colors typical of the natural ochres found in his homeland; white, dark red, grey, and occasionally black.

Global Influence

Tjapaltjarri's work is held in several major public collections across Australia, such as in the National Gallery in Canberra, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the National Gallery of Victoria.[4] He also has work in galleries overseas, such as the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, and the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection at the University of Virginia.[1] In 2012, his work was shown as part of the documenta exhibition in Kassel, Germany.[5][10] As of 2008, the most one of his paintings had sold for was A$85,000.[8]

Tjapaltjarri gained recognition in the United States in September 2015 when he appeared in an article titled "An Aboriginal Artist's Dizzying New York Moment" on the front page of the New York Times Saturday Arts Page. He is shown at the top of the article with a color photo in front of his abstract- looking painting displayed in the Bowery.[11] Glowing appraisal by critic Randall Kennedy garnered attention.[12]

In September 2016, one of his paintings sold for £167,000 at Sotheby's in London.[13] October 2016, he had his first solo exhibition in the United States, at the Salon 94 gallery in New York City.[14]

In March 2019, the Netflix series After Life, made by Ricky Gervais, featured a copy of one of Tjapaltjarri's paintings which had been made by an artist commissioned to do so for a props company in 1999. Gervais' company agreed to pay compensation for using the copy of the work, a 1987 work entitled Tingarri Dreaming, as well as a fee for use of the work in season two of the series.[15]

Musical Influence: The music of Australian composer Newton Armstrong's 2020 album "The Way to Go Out" was influenced by Tjapaltjarri's paintings. "Armstrong's project recreates this ‘dense and mesmerising’ quality in sound, and finds an ingenious correspondence for Tjapaltjarri's great sense of focus and local detail."[16]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Documentation card: "Untitled" (2001) by Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri. View online at the Art Gallery of New South Wales
  2. ↑ Johnson, Vivien (2008). Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists. Alice Springs: IAD Press. p. 334.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Toohey, Paul (4 May 2004). "The Last Nomads" (PDF). The Bulletin. pp. 28–35.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Corbally Stourton, Patrick; Corbally Stourton, Nigel (1996). Songlines and dreamings: contemporary Australian aboriginal painting. Lund Humphries. p. 177. ISBN 9780853316916.
  5. 1 2 Smith, Roberta (13 June 2012). "Art Show as Unruly Organism: Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany". The New York Times. New York. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 29 July 2012.
  6. ↑ Since he was born almost 30 years before he came to know about calendars, the exact year is not known. Some sources estimate around 1958 or 1959.[3][4][5]
  7. ↑ Perkins, Hetti (2011). Art + Soul. Miegunyah Press. p. 76. ISBN 9780522857634.
  8. 1 2 Adlam, Nigel (3 February 2007). "Lost tribe happy in modern world". Herald Sun. Herald & Weekly Times Pty Ltd.
  9. ↑ Smith, Roberta (15 October 2015). "Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri's Aboriginal Dreamtime Paintings". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 8 May 2023.
  10. ↑ Woods, Cameron (7 June 2012). "Australian artists shine at dOCUMENTA (13)". Australia Council for the Arts. Retrieved 29 July 2012.
  11. ↑ Kennedy, Randy (18 September 2015). "An Aboriginal Artist's Dizzying New York Moment". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 9 May 2023.
  12. ↑ Myers, F. (2020). The Work of Art: Hope, Disenchantment, and Indigenous Art in Australia. In The Australian Art Field (pp. 211–223). Routledge.
  13. ↑ "Warlimpirringa Tjapaltjarri born circa 1959 Untitled". Sothebys. Retrieved 17 October 2019.
  14. ↑ Kennedy, Randy (18 September 2015). "An Aboriginal Artist's Dizzying New York Moment". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 October 2019.
  15. ↑ Thomas, Sarah (29 October 2019). "Ricky Gervais's company to pay Aboriginal artist for use of 'fake' work in Netflix's After Life". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 23 July 2022.
  16. ↑ Blume, Philipp (October 2021). "Newton Armstrong – Newton Armstrong, The Way to Go Out. Ballon, Plus-Minus Ensemble. another timbre, at167". Tempo. 75 (298): 103–105. doi:10.1017/S004029822100053X. ISSN 0040-2982.
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