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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Australian Indigenous & Oceanic Art
• Sale Date:
  22 Jul 2014 ~ 6.30pm (Part 1 - Lots 1 - 198)
  23 Jul 2014 ~ 2.30pm (Part 2 - Lots 199 - 331)
• Lot #:
  54
• Lot Description:
  Charlie Wartuma (Tjungurrayi)
  (circa 1921-1999)
  Wild Potato Dreaming (1971)
  synthetic polymer paint on composition board
  91 x 71 cm
• Provenance:
  Painted at Papunya, Northern Territory; Stuart Art Centre, Alice Springs (9027); Private Collection; Private Collection, Melbourne
• Exhibited:
  EXHIBITED The Australian Aboriginal Art Exhibition, Hokkaido Asahikawa Museum of Art, Asahikawa, Japan, April 13 - May 27, 2001; Tochigi Prefectual Museum of Fine Arts, Utsunomiya, Japan, July 15 - September 2, 2001; Iwaki City Art Museum, Iwaki, Japan, November 10 - December 16, 2001, cat. no.6
• References:
  LITERATURE Geoffrey and James Bardon, Papunya, A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2004, p.328, ptg.270 (illus.)
• Notes:
  Charlie Taruru (Wartuma) Tjungurrayi was a man of earthy honesty, held in affectionate regard by his family, as he was by those fortunate to have worked with him as an artist. Wartuma was a key player in the important events that shaped the destiny of his people in the twentieth century. Having been born in the desert beyond the pastoral frontier, the young Tjungurrayi was swept up with the first wave of Pintupi who departed their homeland, following the privations of drought. His initial contact with Europeans was at Mt Liebig in 1932, where his arrival coincided with a multi-disciplinary scientific expedition from the University of Adelaide. Wartuma and his people were suddenly subjected to the most systematically intrusive anthropological investigation to be conducted on Australian soil.1 WartumaÕs family eventually reached Hermannsburg where he encountered the missionary movement at its zenith. Like many lads of his generation, Wartuma was recruited for work on the Ôhome frontÕ during the course of World War II. He witnessed bombs falling in Northern Australia2, and helped bury returned servicemen killed in the New Guinea campaign.3 After the war, Wartuma joined his countrymen in the relative calm of the Haasts Bluff ration station, where he assembled a modest train of camels and worked as a ÔdoggerÕ out west, tracking dingoes and collecting ÔscalpsÕ that were redeemed for a bounty of £1 each.4 Wartuma later worked as a laborer helping to construct the new settlement at Papunya, where he became a central figure at the inception of ÔWestern Desert artÕ. Dissatisfied with conditions at Papunya, Wartuma was an important driver of the outstation movement, resulting in a triumphant return to his homeland, at Kintore in 1981. In 1985 Wartuma was elevated as Chairman of the Walungurru Community Council. Wartuma was profoundly interested in people, especially those who came from a different cultural background to his own. He was comfortable spending time in the Ôintercultural zoneÕ, where Aboriginal and European culture overlapped; a zone enabled by WartumaÕs ready humour and good-hearted communication skills. One of his earliest European friends was Dr. Charles Duguid, a tireless advocate for Aboriginal health, who described ÔCharlieÕ as Ôone of the most intelligent human beings of any race whom I have metÕ.5 During his time as a dogger in the 1950s, Wartuma made many journeys out west, maintaining contact with Pintupi who remained in the desert, separated by hundreds of kilometres from their relatives. It was on one of these epic journeys that Wartuma encountered Uta Uta Tjangala, Ronne Tjampitjinpa and Willy Tjungurrayi, providing them with rations and encouraging them to return with him to Haasts Bluff. Wartuma would go on to play a role as a cultural broker during the early years of the Papunya Tula movement, acting as an interpreter and often mediating tensions between artists and art advisors. Wartuma formed a special relationship with Andrew Crocker (art advisor 1980-1), resulting in a performance piece, Nightsea Crossings/ Conjunction (1983), with performance artist Marina Abromovic, and the first solo exhibition by a Papunya artist, Charlie Tjaruru Tjungurrayi: A retrospective 1970 Ð 1986.6 WartumaÕs attack as an artist conveys the same brave spirit he exhibited over a long and colourful life. Wild Potato Dreaming is a particularly powerful example of his early work, its graphic elements pared-back and stark. A grid of Yala, (Ipomoea costata) roots occupy the space handsomely, their painted size approximating the impressive mass of these moisture-filled tubers. Smaller tubers are depicted at the top and bottom, spreading rhizome-like from the major plant. The historian, Dick Kimber, has suggested that the star-like forms may represent the vigorous above ground vine of the Yala,7 though it is possible that these motifs also represent the attractive trumpet-like flowers of the plant. The site depicted is Tjiterurlnga, in the Dover Hills on the Western Australia /Northern Territory border. Tjiterurlnga is the place of the artistÕs conception and he therefore possesses the rights and responsibilities for the Bilby, Ice Cold Man and Wild Potato Dreamings associated with the site. Wild Potato Dreaming was created in the spring of 1971, just months after the painting movement started at Papunya. Its forthright urgency conveys the artistÕs excitement on discovering the potential of a newfound media to evoke the power of the Dreaming, in this case the tumescent underground energy of ancestral Yala at Tjiterurlnga. John Kean 1 See images from the expedition in Philip Batty, Colliding Worlds: First Contact in the Western Desert 1932-1984. Museum Victoria Publishing. 2006, pp. 8-16 2 Personal communications with the artist, Papunya 1979 3 Andrew Crocker, Charlie Tjaruru Tjungurrayi. Orange, NSW: Orange City Council, 1987, p.15. 4 Diana Young, ÔDingo Scalping and the Frontier Economy in North-West of South Australia.Õ In Indigenous Participation in Australian Economies: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ANU ePress, 2010, p. 98 5 Duigud cited in Andrew Crocker, Charlie Tjaruru Tjungurrayi. Orange, NSW: Orange City Council, 1987, p.15. 6 Vivien Johnson, Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists. IAD Press, 2008. p. 56-7 7 R.G. (Dick) Kimber, ÔLot 31Õ in Bonhams Aboriginal Art, Monday 19 November 2012, pp. 44-5.
• Estimate:
  A$50,000 - 70,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.