Find Lots

• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Australian Indigenous & Oceanic Art
• Sale Date:
  21 Jul 2015 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  43
• Lot Description:
  § Deaf Tommy (Mungatopi)
  (circa 1925-1985)
  Untited (Pukamani - Full Moon) (1965)
  natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark
  89 x 43.5 cm
• Provenance:
  Sandra Le Brun Holmes. Sydney (1965); A Collection From Thomas Hamel Interiors & Martyn Cook Antiques, Mossgreen Auctions, Sydney, 20 May 2012, lot 275 ; Private Collection, Melbourne
• References:
  The painting bears a label verso which reads: "In the Pulinari - (creation time) nobody died until Wai-ai a Tiwi goddess heard Tapara, the Moon Man (her husband's brother) calling her to his embrace. Wyah, the old Sun Woman saw them go, after leaving Jinaini, her baby son, under a bush. In great anger the Sun Woman decided to kill the baby, to punish the mother for her adulterous way. So, she shone her hottest rays on the baby, scorching and killing him. Purukapali, the father, found his dead s
• Notes:
  Deaf Tommy Mungatopi, so called because as a coast watcher on Melville Island during World War II he was rendered deaf by an exploding bomb, was recognised among the Tiwi as an exceptional artist who was regularly commissioned to make tutini or Pukumani funeral poles for ceremonies. He belonged to one of the great Tiwi art dynasties, and was the brother of two other influential Tiwi artists, Alie Miller Mungatopi (c.1910-1968) and Laurie One Eye Nelson Mungatopi (1915-1968). Deaf Tommy made tutini for their Pukumani burial ceremony which is recorded by Sandra Le Brun Holmes in her The Goddess and the Moon Man: The Sacred Art of the Tiwi Aborigines, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1995, pp.91-99. Laurie Mungatopi was one the five Tiwi artists who, in 1958, were commissioned to make tutini by Stuart Scougall and Tony Tuckson for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, heralding the entry of Aboriginal art into Australian fine art museums. In the late 1970s Deaf Tommy made five tutini which formed part of a group that were installed in the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Australia for its opening to the public in 1982. Deaf Tommy had a distinctive painting style that incorporates alternating bands of dotting applied by his wooden comb, the pwoja, and sequences of dashes, or as in this painting, linked diamonds. In his paintings, Mungatopi possessed the ability to evoke the physical atmosphere of a landscape while expressing its ancestral dimension through the repetition and variations on abstracted designs and patterns. Pukumani (Full Moon) relates to a series of paintings in which the artist has reproduced the shimmering effect of light playing off the surface of water at different times of the day. The series includes Moon, morning and evening stars, c.1970, in the collection of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, illustrated in Barnes, K., Kiripapurajuwi (Skills of Our Hands): Good craftsman and Tiwi art, Darwin: Kathy Barnes, 1999. p.43; Sun shining on a coral reef, c.1970, illustrated in Crumlin, R. and A. Knight, Aboriginal Art and Spirituality, Melbourne: Dove Publications, 1995, p.23, plate 4, also in the Northern Territory Museum Collection; and Coral, c.1972 illustrated in Isaacs, J., Tiwi: Art, History, Culture, Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2012, p.142, in the Thomas Vroom Collection. Sun shining on a coral reef, c.1970, is also illustrated in Holmes, ibid:118, under the title Full moon reflected in the sea in the country of Purakapali. The image relates to the ancestral drama were Purukuparli, the apical ancestor of the Tiwi, carried the dead body of his infant son Jinani into the waters off the eastern coast of Melville Island, and drowned, thus bringing death to the previously immortal Tiwi. The site abounds with coral reefs where women collect shellfish at low tide. A summary of this ancestral chronicle is found on a label on the reverse of the painting. Wally Caruana § Indicates that Resale Royalty of 5% will be applied to the hammer price of this work.
• Estimate:
  A$25,000 - 35,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

  Can't see the realised price? Upgrade your subscription now!

• Category:
  Art

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