Rockhole and sandhills at Watukurri
Artist: Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri (Australian, Pintupi language group, c.1926-1998)
Date: 1995
Dimensions:
182 x 122 cm
Medium: Polymer synthetic paint on canvas
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott
Object number: 2016.11
Label Text:Following the Australian government’s assimilationist policies for Aboriginal peoples, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri and many Pintupi people were relocated by 1960 to a settlement called Papunya. By 1971, Geoffrey Gardon, a schoolteacher, along with several art advisors, helped the men at Papunya to produce paintings and share them with broader audiences (women later participated as well). Namarari was a founding artist at the Papunya Tula artists cooperative and one of the most significant artists in this region.
Papuyna artists experimented with color, style, brushwork, and form. They used complex dot and line patterns to express Dreamings (stories passed down generationally about the creation of the world by Ancestral beings) connected to land, history, and culture. These patterns also served to obscure what was considered secret-sacred knowledge, since only those who “owned” a Dreaming were allowed to know the full story. In this work, Namarari visualizes a sacred site of his home country, Watukurri, with concentric lines representing sandhills that surround a sliver of a rockhole, a natural watering place.
Papuyna artists experimented with color, style, brushwork, and form. They used complex dot and line patterns to express Dreamings (stories passed down generationally about the creation of the world by Ancestral beings) connected to land, history, and culture. These patterns also served to obscure what was considered secret-sacred knowledge, since only those who “owned” a Dreaming were allowed to know the full story. In this work, Namarari visualizes a sacred site of his home country, Watukurri, with concentric lines representing sandhills that surround a sliver of a rockhole, a natural watering place.
DescriptionThe painting is abstract with black and white striped lines that circulate around the painting with a reddish rectangle in the center. The overall composition has an Op Art, meditative effect.
On view
In Collection(s)