Warlimpirringka Tjapaltjarri

Born:        1959

People:     Pintupi

Language: Pintupi

Area:          Kirrinwara

Warlimpirringka Tjapaltjarri

Warlimpirringka Tjapaljarri in 1984 was one of a party of nine Pintupi speakers who made their first contact with non-Aboriginal people when they walked out of the desert west of Lake Mackay into the small Kiwirrkura community, just inside the West Australian border west of Alice Springs. Three years later, along with his brothers Thomas and Walala, he began painting for the Papunya Tula Artists cooperative.

Stories, or 'Dreamings,' of the Tingari Cycle are an important body of myth concerning the Tingari ancestors of the creative Dreamtime (or 'Dreaming'), period. The Tingari men and women traveled across great distances and laid down a body of ceremonies and other law which subsequently formed the basis of young men's higher (meaning post-initiation) education.

Tingari, Mulpu

The stories themselves are communicated only to initiated men. In art destined for the fine art market they are often represented as a series of roundels joined by a mesh of connecting lines, formally representing sacred places and the tracks of the ancestors between them.  Warlimpirringka Tjapaltjarri’s distinctive representation is a variant of that convention.

Collections:

Musee des Arts Africians et Oceaniens, Paris

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.