Ronnie Tjampitjinpa | 'Tingari, 2009' | 30x91cm

Code: PPFART927

Artist: Ronnie Tjampitjinpa

Title: Tingari

Area: Central Desert, NT

Community: Pintupi

Medium: Acrylic On Linen

Size: 30x91cm

Year: 2009

Ronnie Tjampitjinpa's Tingari paintings carry the journeys of the ancestral Tingari beings, who travelled with their wives and novices across the Western Desert, performing ceremonies and creating the sacred sites, waterholes and landforms that shape Pintupi law. Much of this cycle remains restricted, known fully only to senior initiated men, so the stories surface in paint as geometric form rather than illustration. Concentric circles mark the sites themselves, and the lines that run between them trace the paths of travel. It is one of the oldest and most consistently painted subjects to come out of the Papunya movement, and Tjampitjinpa has worked it with unmatched graphic authority for decades.

Ronnie Tjampitjinpa is a senior Pintupi artist and one of the original Papunya Tula painters from the early 1970s. His bold geometric compositions depict Tingari Cycle narratives with striking graphic clarity. A first-generation artist of the movement that changed the art world.