Fred Tjakamarra

(born circa 1926) Sam Tjampitjin (born circa 1930) and Tjumpo Tjapanangka (circa 1929-2007)

Men's Law Painting, The Great Sandy Desert, W.A., 1997

Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
Purchased from Warlayirti Artists, Wirrimanu (Balgo Hills), Western Australia in July 1997
The Laverty Collection, Sydney

EXHIBITED:
Paintings from Remote Communities: Indigenous Australian Art from the Laverty Collection, Sydney, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle, 5 July - 31 August 2008

LITERATURE:
John McDonald, 'Art and Authenticity' in 'Collections' the International Magazine of Art & Culture, 1998, vol. 3, no. 1, p.62 (illus.)
Colin Laverty and Elizabeth Laverty et al., Beyond Sacred: Recent Painting from Australia's Remote Aboriginal Communities - the collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, Melbourne: Hardie Grant Books, 2008, p.142 (illus.)

In Western Desert societies, the making of a
ceremonial ground painting or mosaic requires a
number of artists to collaborate for reasons of size and
the time taken to prepare the work. More importantly,
the artists must be in specific kin relationships to
each other: those with patrilineally inherited rights
of ownership of the ceremonial Dreaming and its
associated designs, who are members of one moiety,
collaborate with those who possess matrilineally
inherited or custodial rights in the same Dreaming
and designs, and who belong to the opposite moiety.
The practice of creating collaborative paintings has
extended into the public domain of art, from the early
collective works at Papunya in the 1970s and those
from Yuendumu in the 1980s, and continues to this
day in several communities. At Balgo, the history of
collaborative painting beyond ceremonial requirements
dates to 1982 when paintings were made for Catholic
Holy Week services, such as Last journey of Jesus by Greg
Mosquito and other Balgo men (Crumlin, R. and A.
Knight, Aboriginal Art and Spirituality, Melbourne: Dove
Publications, 1995, plate 29, pp.56-7). The seminal
exhibition Art from the Great Sandy Desert at the Art
Gallery of Western Australia in 1986 included two
painted 'assembly banners', each depicting Christian
themes painted by a group of men (O'Ferrall, M.,
[ed.], Art from the Great Sandy Desert, Perth: Art Gallery
of Western Australia, 1986, p.8).

In the winter of 1996, the first of a number of
collaborative paintings was made during the tenure of
James Cowan as art coordinator at Warlayirti Artists.
Two of the first paintings are by Fred Tjakamarra,
Sam Tjampitjin and Tjumpo Tjapanangka and are
illustrated in Cowan, J., Balgo: New Directions, Sydney:
Craftsman House, 1999, pp. 129 and 135. The
three artists are all senior law men belonging to the
same generation: Tjumpo Tjapanangka belongs to
one patrimoiety, whereas Sam Tjampitjin and Fred
Tjakamarra belong to the other. In these two paintings
and in Men's Law painting. The Great Sandy Desert, W.A.,
1997, the sequence of artists is consistent: Tjapanangka
has painted the middle section in all three works, while
the others have painted the sections to either side.

In this painting the upper register has been painted by
Sam Tjampitjin and, on the left, it represents a place
near Kiwirrkura called Parkulata with a camp and fire
surrounded by a windbreak made of trees, to the right
of which is a depiction of a whirlwind at Tarunku. The
central section by Tjumpo depicts freshwater soaks,
while the lower register by Fred Tjakamarra shows
clouds and rain. As the title suggests, this composite
image refers to the teachings of the Tingari ancestors.

Wally Caruana

This painting is sold with accompanying Warlayirti Artists documentation