acrylic on composition board (Masonite)
71.5 × 68 cm; 83 x 79.5 cm (framed)
Estimate $110,000 - $140,000
PROVENANCE
Painted at Papunya, NT, c. 1972
Seddell McLean, Vic acquired in the late 1970s
thence by decent in 2010
Private collection, Vic
D’Lan Contemporary, Vic Cat No. INV-TJAA-0006
EXHIBITED
Significant-2023 Part One, D’Lan Contemporary, Melbourne, Vic, 2 June - 22 July 2023
Essay by John Kean
This unusual painting appeared without a detailed provenance, its treatment and material qualities suggested that it might have been painted at Papunya 1971-1972. Its significance stems from the possibility that a renowned artist created it during the founding of contemporary desert art. While several of the painting’s pictorial elements are common to other early Papunya boards, others are unique and as a consequence, raise the bar required for positive attribution. Yet the object’s material qualities are compelling, for they are redolent of the properties of well-known and definitively provenance paintings produced at Papunya in the second half of 1972.
While I was initially wary of its authenticity, the painting’s idiosyncratic iconography demanded attention. If a founding Papunya artist, as suggested, created the work, the painting would substantially expand the already impressive range and scope of treatments employed by the 25 artists who founded contemporary art in Central Australia. After detailed examination together with Luke Scholes, I concluded the painting was, in all likelihood painted by a founding Papunya artist. There follows a summary of the reasoning behind my contention.
Period
The painting is most likely to have been created in a period that Vivien Johnson has characterised by as the ‘interregnum’.1 The interregnum commences in August 1972, with the departure of Geoffrey Bardon; a teacher widely attributed with facilitating the emergence of painting at Papunya and concludes with the employment of Peter Fannin as the first art advisor under the Papunya Tula Artists banner in December of that year. Paintings produced during the interregnum are frequently experimental, for the artists were working in advance of the conventions that came to characterise Papunya Tula painting as a recognisable style. Moreover, the artists worked in the Men’s Painting Room without the intervention of a non-Indigenous advisor.2 Excited and working with
extraordinary freedom, the artists innovated, inventing diverse approaches to the articulation of icons and decorative application. Some elements of these early Papunya painting, most notably, the imbrication of background patterns to form an expansive overall schema were used for a short period, then abandoned in favour of the now familiar dotted approach. Working as a collective, the artists called on elements drawn from ceremonial life, while taking inspiration from the innovations of the peers - the period resulted in a ‘blooming of a hundred flowers.’3
Many of the works created during the interregnum were subsequently documented and dispatched by Patricia Hogan, director of the Stuart Centre in Alice Springs, who at that moment, was the sole representative of the Papunya artists. Thus the majority of paintings produced during the period were lumped into Consignment 19, the largest and most diverse of the early consignments to have left Papunya. The stylistic mysteries of the consignment have yet to be fully disentangled.
Another consequence of the independence with which the founding artists operated during at the interregnum was the freedom with which they could sell their work to whom they pleased. A select group of customers consisted of an assortment of non-Aboriginal settlement workers and government officials. Other buyers were found among the visitors who stayed with friends and family members working at Papunya. As a result of these arbitrary acquisitions, an unknown number of undocumented paintings left the community to be transported to disparate locations, where they hung on study walls, or stored for decades, unsighted in a dark cupboard. Now, a full half-century after their acquisition, such paintings are occasionally uncovered in the estates of those who lived at or visited Papunya - undocumented jewels whose provenance is lost with the passing of a painting’s original purchaser. In these instances, the authenticity of a particular work must be assayed by the object’s material, iconographic and stylistic qualities. Such is the case with this mysterious board.
Materiality
The humble materials used in this work are typical of the interregnum. The Masonite substrate was a proprietary product used in many buildings on the community. Bardon and the artists had developed the restricted palette typical of paintings produced at Papunya. The paint in this work - black, deep red-oxide and white - is typical of works produced in the Men’s Painting Room in 1972. Notably, each line and dot is created with a stroke of carefully thinned paint. Despite having painted for such a short period, the artists approached their task with confidence. A close examination of any detail of the work reveals the direction and pressure of each stroke. The brushstrokes are typical of the most proficient of the early Papunya artists. The paint is often semi-transparent, and modulation of tone (both between various marks and within a single stroke of the brush) is critical to my confidence that the painting was created at Papunya in 1972.
Variations in transparency and the frequency of the dotted surface produce an uneven, shimmering surface typical of artists of this period. Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula first developed the effect of massed dots to evoke shimmering meteorological qualities associated with the Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa.4 The proficiency required to produce such attractive shimmering effects narrows the number of artists likely to have produced this work. Inspired by Warangkula’s ground breaking innovation, Anatjarri Tjakamarra, John Tjakamarra, Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, Timmy Payunka Tjapangati and Yala Yala Gibson Tjungurrayi produced exceptional paintings whose icons were embedded in a scintillating field of dots.
The back of the current work is cryptic, for there are no catalogue numbers or gallery labels to suggest or confirm the painting’s provenance. A simple baton has been attached to the Masonite from which a rough copper wire has been slung. The support structure is aged, unassuming and improvised. This utilitarian treatment is consistent with a work that has been purchased directly from the artist and hung with little fuss by the painting’s purchaser.