This general motif is a favourite and characteristic
of the artist.
As usual with the artist’s paintings, the familiar and limited vocabulary
of ideograms is employed subjectively. Thus an ideogram may denote different
things on different occasions. Only the artist, therefore, can provide a full
interpretation thereof.
On this occasion the artist was depicting the story of two old women "minma" on
their travels. The detail shows their camping at a place called "Inindinya" -
The Place of the Beanwood Tree. This is a soakage site about half way between
Sandy Blight Junction and the West Australian border, west from Alice Springs.
The design shows the soakage in the middle flanked by the imprint of the women's
buttocks in the sand. The women's travels took them from Docker River in the
south, followed by two men, to Pinari-nya (a claypan and water site to the
north) where the men caught up with them.
PROVENANCE
Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd., Alice Springs,
Catalogue Number SL801102
Born at Walukuritji, south of Lake MacDonald, Shorty Lungkata Tjunurrayi probably
arrived in Haasts Bluff in approximately 1948.
He was one of the last artists to join as a founding member of the Papunya
Painting group. A great hunter, he was considered one of the most senior men
in the Pintupi community at Papunya, renowned for his ritual authority and
his dancing.
REFERENCE
Sutton 1988, p.134, fig.176; for a closely related painting
by the artist included in the landmark exhibition 'Dreamings:
The Art of Aboriginal Australia.'
REPRESENTED
National Gallery of Victoria
Queensland Art Gallery
South Australian Museum
National Museum of Australia
Museums & Art Galleries of the Northern Territory
Australian Museum
Flinders University Art Museum
The Kelton Foundation Collection, Santa Monica, U.S.A.
