Cooee Art MarketPlace Indigenous Fine Art Auction | 23 June 2020

AUCTION | Indigenous Fine Art 23 June 2020 COOEE ART Mar ketPlace INDIGENOUS FINE ART

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COVER IMAGE | LOT #52 PATRICK OLOODOODI TJUNGURRAYI Puntujtalpa, 2005 152 x 122 | 154 x 124 cm (framed) synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $10,000 - 15,000 2

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INDEX ARTIST

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ARTIST

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Abie Kemarre Loy Albert Namatjira Alec Mingelmanganu Artist Once Known Bill Tjapaltjarri Whiskey Billy Perrurle Benn Bininyuwuy Bunumbirr Charlie Marshall Tjungurrayi Charlie Tjapangati Clinton Nain Cory Warkatu Surprise Deaf Tommy Mungatopi Destiny Deakin Dhapa Ganambarr 2 & Yalmakan Marawili Dick Nguleingulei Dorothy Napangardi Elizabeth Nyumi Nungurrayi Emily Kame Kngwarreye Eubena Nampitjin Freddie Timms Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi George (Hairbrush) Tjungarrayi Gloria Petyarre Helen McCarthy Tyalmuty Jack Britten Jack Mengenen Dale Jimmy Mawukura (Mulgra) Nerrimah Jimmy Mijau Mijau John Mawurndjul Johnny Yungut Tjupurrula Judy Napangardi Watson Kathleen Ngal Kathleen Petyarre Kay Lindjawanga Kitty Kantilla Lena Nyadbi Lily Karadada

82 33 26 94 11 13 28 59 67 104 37 92 105 101 90 48, 73 63 9, 34, 74 81 85, 98 36 70 47, 78 83 58 23, 89 84 28 17, 79 12 44 46,110 49, 76 79 94 22 103

Lin Onus Lorna Naparrula Fencer Maggie Watson Napangardi Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri Minnie Pwerle Mithinari Guruwiwi Mitjili Napanangka Gibson Narritjin Maymuru Nellie Stewart Ngipi Ward Nyurapayia (Mrs Bennett) Nampitjinpa Otto Pareroultja Paddy Jampin Jaminji Paddy Wainburranga Fordham Patrick Mung Mung Patrick Oloodoodi Tjungurrayi Peg Leg Tjampitjinpa Pirrmangka Napanangka Prince of Wales Pulpurru Davies Queenie McKenzie Nakara Rammey Ramsey Ronnie Tjampitjinpa Rover Joolama Thomas Sally (Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda) Gabori Sam Tjampitjin Shane Pickett Susie Bootja Bootja Tjawina Porter Nampitjinpa Tjayanka Woods Tony Albert Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula Walangkura Napanangka Wally Mandarrk Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri Yakari Napaltjarri Yannima Tommy Watson

107 41 62 68, 69 35, 43, 108 90 42 91 53 20 52, 100 31 96 93 102 66 50 24 16 40 14, 56, 87 21 19 57, 58, 60, 88, 99 45 65 55 65 65 109 10, 104, 106 61, 80 64 29 71 111, 112 38, 54

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AUCTION | Indigenous Fine Art Tuesday 23 June 2020 | 7pm

326 Oxford Street Paddington NSW 2021

Auction Viewing 4 - 22 June 2020 | 10-6pm Tuesday 23 June 2020 | 10-2pm by appointment only

marketplace@cooeeart.com.au +61 2 9300 9233

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ADRIAN NEWSTEAD OAM | Founding Director - Senior Specialist adrian@cooeeart.com.au | +61 402 126 645 Adrian Newstead OAM established Cooee Art in 1981 and has organised and curated more than 400 exhibitions of Indigenous art since that time. A former President of the Indigenous Art Trade Association and Director of Aboriginal Tourism Australia he became the Head of Aboriginal Art for Lawson~Menzies in 2003, and Managing Director of Menzies Art Brands until 2008. Adrian is an Aboriginal art consultant, dealer, author and art commentator, based in Bondi, NSW. He has more that 35 years experience working with Aboriginal and Australian Contemporary art.

MIRRI LEVEN | Executive Director mirri@cooeeart.com.au | +61 416 379 691 Having gained degrees in International Development and Fine Arts, and a Masters in Art Administration from the University of NSW College of Fine Art, Mirri undertook fieldwork in the Solomon Islands and India whilst acting as the international photo editor for a London based travel magazine. She joined Cooee Art in 2007 and was appointed the Gallery Manager in 2010. In 2013, she left Australia to take up a role as director of a contemporary art gallery in London. Mirri has been a director of Cooee Art since 2015. She plans its exhibition program and project development, and is a founder of its auction arm, the Cooee Art MarketPlace.

EMMA LENYSZYN | Auction Specialist emma@cooeeart.com.au | +61 400 822 546 Educated in Fine Art at RMIT, Emma joined Cooee Art in 2016 as Gallery Manager Paddington and is now the Auction Specialist for the bi-annual Cooee Art MarketPlace Auctions. She has a long history of employment in the arts including working at international institutions, commercial galleries and private collections.

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Cooee Art Marketplace is the most effective, informative and attractive way to buy and sell Indigenous art

We understand that Australian Indigenous art is a vital cultural legacy and believe that it is best exhibited and offered for sale by those who are passionately committed to it.

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COOEE ART MARKETPLACE AUCTION | 23 JUNE 2020 Well, who saw that one coming? Just as Australian Indigenous art had fully recovered from the great international art slump, gearing up into overdrive following 2019, the art world – along with the rest of the world –appeared to grind to an earth-shattering halt. As I write, the doors of public museums and art galleries are yet to re-open and staff are working furiously to make their collections and programs available online. What a difference a few months make!

In 2019, Aboriginal art had hung front and the centre on the international art stage, with major museum shows at the Menil Collection in Houston and the Kunsthaus Zug in Switzerland, while highly successful exhibitions and auctions were held in New York, Sydney, and Melbourne. In December, Cooee Art MarketPlace held its most successful Indigenous fine art auction to date, with 90% of all lots sold by value and 84% by volume.

Foremost amongst the sales were the $225,700 paid for a spectacular rendition of Kame-Summer Awelye, painted in 1992 by Emily Kame Kngwarreye along with the very rare, significant Wandjina bark, painted by Alec Mingelmanganu, which sold for $96,000. Another highly desirable work by Nyurapaya Nampitjinpa achieved $72,000.

So encouraged were we by our steadily growing success that we began putting this catalogue together.

By mid-March 2020, before the Covid-19 lockdown in Australia, we had already collected the entire body of work documented in this catalogue. Like many of our contemporaries in the creative industries, we have survived financially during the past few months by thinking outside the box, just as we will take an innovative approach with this sale. Foremost is the publication of this printed catalogue, which has been sent to you with our compliments.

The sale will be held on the 23rd of June 2020. Due to uncertainty surrounding lockdown restrictions, there will be no preview night. All works will be on display at 326 Oxford Street, Paddington and can be viewed by appointment. To book an appointment for your own private viewing, simply visit Eventbright. We will ensure that one of our specialists is in attendance to walk you through the works and assist you. For those who live overseas, and are unable to attend the viewing,

we are delighted to offer free consultations on Zoom or FaceTime, during which we can explore the works throughout this catalogue. Do please contact us to take up this opportunity for a personal consultation.

We have collected 97 works of art for this winter collection, including works on canvas, bark paintings, and sculptures, created between the 1950s and now, by artists of renown in regions throughout Australia. Works range in value from $500 to $80,000.The sale includes the small but extremely rare Wandjina bark by Alec Mingelmanganu (Lot 15), a superb large watercolour

by Albert Namatjira (Lot 20), the largest work ever created by Balgo Hills artist Elizabeth Nyumi (Lot 48), a spectacular large painting by Peg Leg Tjampitjinpa (Lot 36), a range of early Arnhem Land bark paintings and sculptures, and Kimberley ochre works by Rover Thomas, Freddie Timms, Queenie McKenzie, Rammey Ramsey, Jack Dale, Lena Nyadbi and others.

You can discover a wealth of information on each of the artists and their works in this catalogue, as well as detailed information about the content and subjects of the artworks on our Cooee Art website www.cooeeart. com.au/marketplace Mirri, Anne, and I continue to be grateful to all of the artists, their supporters, and to our clients for the good will, faith, and support that they have expressed toward our endeavours.

With our very best wishes.

Adrian Newstead INDIGENOUS FINE ART

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are really sorry for you people. “ We We cry for you because you haven’t got meaning of culture in this country. We have a gift we want to give you. We keep getting blocked from giving you that gift. We get blocked by politics and politicians.

We get blocked by media, by process of law. All we want to do is come out from under all of this and give you this gift. And it’s the gift of pattern thinking. It’s the culture which is the blood of this country, of Aboriginal groups, of the ecology, of the land itself.

”

- Ngarinyin Elder, David Banggal Mowaljarlai OAM (1925 - 1997) 8

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LOT #1 EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) Yam Dreaming, 1995 56 x 77 cm | 78 x 98 cm (frame) synthetic polymer paint on arches hand-made paper EST $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Dacou Gallery (Catalogue number obscured by frame), SA Flinders Lane Gallery, Vic Cat No. FG010061.EK Private Collection, Vic Signed ‘Emily’ lower right hand corner

The root system of the yam plant is a complex mass that stretches a long way underground and spreads up to 12 metres from the centre point. At ground level, the yam exhibits bright green leaves with yellow flowers and its branches cover a great deal of surface area. It is found in woodlands, close to water sources.

The yam is most abundant after rainfall, when the root system develops rapidly. Several months later, the plant dies off and Aboriginal women look for cracks in the earth indicating where the roots and tubers are located. Often, large areas are excavated in their search to find the edible tubers of the plant. Once found, the yams are taken back to the community, where they are eaten raw or cooked. They have a rather bland taste but make a filling meal.

In the Yam Dreaming, the Emily is paying homage to the spirit of the yam plant, so that it regenerates year after year to feed people.

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LOT #2 TONY ALBERT (1981 - ) Life Among the First Australians, 2017 25 x 40 cm | 32 x 49 cm (frame) pigment print on paper EST $2,500 - 3,500 PROVENANCE Sullivan + Strumpf, NSW Private Collection, Vic Tony Albert, a descendant of the Girramay, Yidinji, and KukuYalanji peoples, was born in Townsville, North Queensland. He graduated from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane in 2004. He promptly joined urban-based Indigenous art collective ProppaNOW, which included artists Richard Bell, Jennifer Herd, Vernon Ah Kee, Fiona Foley, and Bianca Beetson.

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Albert employs a wide range of mediums, including painting, photography, photography, and mixed media, to engage with political, historical, and cultural Aboriginal and Australian history. Like Bell and Ah Kee, the use of text is essential to Albert’s practice.

Tony Albert’s techniques and imagery displace traditional Australian Aboriginal aesthetics and employ a kind of conceptuality. Appropriating textual references from sources as diverse as popular music, film, literary fiction, and art history, Albert plays with the tension arising from the visibility and, in turn, invisibility of Aboriginal People across news media, literature, and the visual arts. Central to his way of working is his expansive collection of ‘Aboriginalia’ (a term the artist coined to describe kitschy objects and images that feature naive portrayals of Aboriginality).

Albert creates work that is not only visually appealing, but also acts as a vehicle for stimulating discussion and communicating historical attitudes toward Australia’s Indigenous peoples.

LOT #3 BILL TJAPALTJARRI WHISKEY (C.1920 - 2008) Rockholes near the Olga’s, 2007 140 x 40 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Watiyawarnu Artists, Mount Leibig, NT Cat No. 77-0715 Artitja Fine Art Gallery,- WA Private Collection, WA Bill Whiskey’s bold bright painting style reflected his indomitable spirit. He did not begin painting on canvas until entering the last four years of his life at 84 years of age, by which time he was widely renowned as a powerful healer and keeper of sacred knowledge. His paintings, the first to depict the major Dreaming story and the creation of major sites throughout his country, are imbued with authority and steeped in traditional knowledge.

His subjects included the mythic battle related in the Cockatoo Dreaming that occurred at his birthplace, Pirupa Alka (Rock holes near the Olgas - Kata Tjuta and Ayers Rock - Uluru).

During the battle, white feathers were scattered about and the landscape became indented by the entangled combatants crashing to the ground repeatedly. Subterranean streams filled these impressions with water and a circular amphitheatre was created by the sweep of wings. Today, a large, central, glowing white rock signifies the fallen cockatoo, still sipping the lifegiving water from the sacred pools. Colourful blues, yellows, and reds, always tempered by cockatoo-white, represent the wildflowers that grow in profusion after rain. In keeping with the depiction of Dreaming stories throughout the Western Desert, the mythic and numinous is inherent within the sacred geography.

In this painting, water places such as Pirupa Akla are marked by sets of concentric circles, their dazzling presence representing their powerful life-giving significance rather than their actual size. The actions of the White Cockatoo and Crow ancestors are encrypted as dotted patches that reference topographic features associated with the Dreaming.

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LOT #4 JOHNNY YUNGUT TJUPURRULA (C. 1930 - 2016) Tjungirri, 1998 122 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen

PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. JY980553 Private Collection, Vic

This painting depicts designs associated with the soakage water site of Tjungamunta, situated in an area of stony hills and abundant rocks north-east of the Kiwirrkura community. In mythological times, a large group of Tingari Men travelled from the south-west, passing through Kiwirrkura and Tjungamunta and then continuing further to the northeast.

Johnny Yungut was born in country north-east of Kiwirrkurra. At the time of his death he was the last surviving man of his generation. He began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1978 but moved away from Papunya and only resumed painting in 1991.

The Tingari travelled over vast stretches of the country at the dawn of time, performing rituals and creating and shaping particular sites.

This beautiful work is characterised by the soft palette of muted white, yellow, pink, and purple, painstakingly applied by meticulous brush work.

EST $9,000 - 12,000

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LOT #5 BILLY PERRURLE BENN (1943 - 2012) Artetyerre, 2008 61 x 122 cm | 64 x 126 cm (frame) synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Mwerre Anthurre Artists, NT Cat No. BB081036 Private Collection, Tas Billy Benn was born in the Harts Range, 200 km north-east of Alice Springs. As a young man, he worked in the local mine and learned to paint in watercolour from the Chinese wife of one of the miners. He did not begin painting in earnest, however, until 2000.

The influence of Chinese painting traditions on Benn’s art can be seen in the works’ scale and perspective, their layered colour, and their selfassured brushstrokes. Though painted with acrylics, the colours are arranged like a classic watercolour palette.These are applied as washes before thicker impasto paint is added. Soft pinks, golden yellows, bright oranges, velvet purples, and deep browns are used to create land-forms and features. He whips up skies and lays down slopes and escarpments with fluid single movements, as in the laying down of traditional Chinese brushstrokes.

Billy Benn’s art has often been critically located outside of the art world category of fine art. Journalist Nicholas Rothwell was one of many writers to refer to him as an outsider artist, a status conferred due to his stylistically naive approach, his mental condition, and the fact that he was characterised as ‘lost between worlds’.

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LOT #6 QUEENIE MCKENZIE NAKARA (1930 - 1998) Limestone Hills Texas, 1995 92 x 92 cm natural earth pigments on canvas

Signed verso

In the 1970s, the establishment of the Warmun community drew her tribe together once more, becoming a cultural focal point within the Kimberley area. Queenie played a leading role in restoring her people’s culture and working toward a secure future. Involvement in community affairs led her to experiment with representational art as an educational tool in the local school, where she taught Gija language and cultural traditions. She was encouraged to paint her first artistic experiments by Rover Thomas, with whom she had worked in the stock camps for much of her life.

Queenie McKenzie was born c.1930 at the Old Texas station, on the Ord River in the north-west of Western Australia. As a young girl, she cooked for the stockmen, tending and riding horses and journeying as they drove cattle across the vast pastoral region of the north.

This painting demonstrates her strong love and attachment to country.

Here, Queenie has painted the rocky hills on the edge of the desert plain in the country of her childhood and early working life near Old Texas Downs cattle station.

EST $8,000 - 10,000 PROVENANCE Painted at Pensioner Unit Warmun Community, WA Private Collection, Vic

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LOT #7 PRINCE OF WALES (C. 1938 - 2002) Body Marks, 2000 60 x 45 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas EST $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Karen Brown Gallery, NT Cat No. kb0651 Private Collection, NSW Born with the tribal name Midpul, Prince of Wales grew up with his mother’s people, the Wadgigiyn, on the Cox Peninsula across the harbour from Darwin. He spent much of his adult life living at the beach camp at Cullen Bay, now an expensive marina development. His father, Imabul, was known as King George and this, perhaps as much as the fact that Midpul danced for Queen Elizabeth during a royal trip to Australia in the 1960s, resulted in his familiar ‘English’ name.

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Despite suffering a stroke prior to gaining fame as an artist, Prince of Wales was the first contemporary Aboriginal artist from the Larakia region to gain wide renown. He painted the traditional body designs used in Danggalaba ceremonies, a subject with specific sacred cultural content.

LOT #8 JOHN MAWURNDJUL (1952 - ) Mardayin from Kuruldul, 2004 150 x 50 cm (irregular) natural earth pigments with PVC fixative on stringy bark EST $12,000 - 18,000 PROVENANCE Maningrida Art Centre, NT Cat No. 1575-04 Private Collection, NSW John Mawurndjul lives at Milmilngkan. Here, the power of Ngalyod, the Rainbow Serpent, lies underneath the water of a billabong. This painting, the Mardayin Design, displays the complex composition of Mawurndjul’s intricate rarrk skills, conveying the power of the place.

The Mardayin is a major male ceremony of a secret and sacred nature.

Much of the meaning of the iconography in the painting is not in the domain of public knowledge and so it cannot be explained in detail here.

The site referred to is Kakodbebuldi, an outstation on the Dangkorlo clan estate in the Mann River region. It is located on a large billabong covered in waterlillies. This place is about 50km south of Maningrida in Central North Arnhem Land.

Born at Mumeka, an important site for the Kurulk clan located near the Mann River in Central Arnhem Land, John Mawurndjul was taught to paint by his elder brother Jimmy Njiminjuma and his uncle Peter Marralwanga. Today he often paints alongside his wife Kay Lindjuwanga, while they guide the development of their children and his niece Irenie Ngalinba, Jimmy Njiminjuma’s daughter.

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LOT #9 RONNIE TJAMPITJINPA (C. 1943 - ) Travels of the Tingari Ancestors, 2002 125 x 96.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $8,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. RT0206074 Des Rogers Art Dealer, Vic Aranda Art, Vic Private Collection, Vic Ronnie Tjampitjinpa walked with his family out of the West Australian desert and settled into life in the tumultuous and crowded settlement of Papunya at 13 years of age. He was in his late 20s at the dawn of the Desert painting movement in the community. His tribal initiation into ceremonial knowledge, along with his familiarity with country and

sacred sites, stood him in good stead when, as one of the youngest painters in Papunya, he was tutored by Old Mick Tjakamarra. As senior custodian of the Honey Ant Dreaming, Tjakamarra had played an instrumental role in initiating the Papunya art movement.

Ronnie’s works first appeared in Papunya Tula exhibitions during the 1970s, and later in commercial art galleries in Sydney and Melbourne throughout the 1980s, when he won the Alice Springs Art Prize.

His work was subsequently included in a number of major survey exhibitions in Australia and overseas, including a solo retrospective in 2015 at the Art Gallery of NSW. The Tingari song and dance cycles are the most secret and sacred of the deeply religious rituals of the Western Desert Tribes of Central Australia. The songs associated with them consist of hundreds of stanzas, telling of the travels and adventures of the Tingari, their creation of sacred sites and fertility rites, the significance of body designs, and decorations made of woven human hair.

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EST $3,000 - 5,000

This painting depicts a series of water sites that belong to the artist’s husband. Ngipi used to accompany her husband to these sites. Along their travels they would reach a big rockhole called Katantjarra. Further on is Yumantjarra, which has has two rockholes. Rabbits can be hunted here. Both Warlku and Purmingka have two rockholes. Later they would reach Mulyartjan, an area with four rockholes west of Patjarr.

In this way they would traverse the country kapitu-kapitu, from water to water.

PROVENANCE Kayili Artists, NT Cat No. 07-016 Aboriginal and Pacific Art Gallery, NSW Private Collection, NSW

In the Dreaming story (tjukurrpa) that explains the creation of this country, the rockholes were created by Tjilkamarda, the echidna ancestor who in a fit of anger created a hailstorm. He then travelled on to Kuntarantjarra and Yunpalara, a large claypan site, and later to Manmun.

LOT #10 NGIPI WARD (1949 - 2014) Katantjarra Rockhole, 2007 152 x 101 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen

Ngipi lived in the small and very remote community of Patjarr in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia, where she led a nomadic life hunting and gathering with her family until well into the 1960s.

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Another sacred songline, the Wati Kutjarra (two men) tjukurrpa, also passed through this region and on to Tallalla, Parrantja, and Tukarankatja rockholes, where the two men find and ‘take’ a women [sic] on their long travels to the south.

LOT #11 RAMMEY RAMSEY (1935 - ) Untitled, 2005 180 x 160 cm natural earth pigments on Belgian linen EST $13,000 - 18,000 PROVENANCE Jirrawun Arts, WA Cat No. RR 8-2005-69 Sotheby’s Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 2008 Tineriba Fine Arts, SA Private Collection, SA Accompanied by an image of the artist with the artwork EXHIBITED Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne, Vic, Masterworks, 20th Oct – 4th Dec, 2010 Tineriba Gallery, Hahndorf, SA, Kimberley Collection, 2012

Rammey Ramsey started painting for Jirrawun Arts in the central Kimberley in 2000. He was in his mid sixties by then, but his involvement in traditional ceremony had already made painting and art-making a central part of his life. He is a senior Gija man of Jungurra skin and his country is Warwaloon, west of Bedford Downs. This country provides the subject matter for most of his works.

Though already in his senior years, Ramsey became renowned as a trailblazer of the modern Aboriginal art movement. Unhampered in his capacity for innovation, he draws his inspiration from the complex network of Dreaming narratives that thread through the vast tracts of once-shared land. The ceremonial exchanges that occurred seasonally between specific tribal and language groups has fostered a culturally diverse, yet collective perspective. This exchange plays out uniquely in Ramsey’s work.

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LOT #12 LENA NYADBI (1936 - ) Gimmenbayin Cave, 2006 82 x 198 cm natural earth pigments on Belgian linen EST $25,000 - 35,000 PROVENANCE Warmun Art Centre, WA Cat No. 225/06 Niagara Galleries, Vic Cat No. 9962 Private Collection, Vic Lena was born at Warnmarnjooloogoon Lagoon (near Greenvale Station) and grew up in Thildoowam country, also known as Old Lissadell Station. Like other Aboriginal people living in the East Kimberley at this time, Lena was put to work on the station at an early age under conditions akin to indentured labour. Here she worked a wide range of jobs, including mustering cattle, milking cows, and general station duties. Lena moved to the new Lissadell Station when it was relocated for the development of Lake Argyle. This region is of special significance to Lena, who remembers the water for the Ord River Irrigation Scheme covering her country and all of its significant sites.

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Lena paints two principal Dreamings. The first is Jimbirla. Jimbirla are the sharp quartz-like stones used by Gija people of the past to make spear tips. These are found in abundance in Nyadbi’s father’s country, which lies to the north of Warmun.

The second is Dayiwool Lirlmim - the scales that scraped off the Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) barramundi, as she jumped through a range of hills escaping from the Spinifex nets of women who were trying to catch her. The gap her body made in the rock is the current site of the Argyle Diamond Mine and the diamonds are her scales. Lena paints, what she describes as her ‘poor bugger country’, as mining physically renders what were once mountains into plains.

In 2006, Lena was one of eight Indigenous artists from Australia featured in the Musée du quai Branly project in Paris, which involved reproducing her work in concrete relief on the façade of the building.

This relationship continued in 2013, when Lena’s ‘Dayiwool Lirlmim’ was recreated in large scale on the rooftop of the museum, visible from atop the Eiffel Tower.

LOT #13 JACK MENGENEN DALE (1922 - 2013) Our Country - Gnaningun, 2007 169 x 211 cm natural earth pigments & synthetic paint on canvas EST $12,000 - 16,000

between humans. He depicted these spirits in a distinctive style: ghost like, with halos, large, dark, pool-like eyes, and without mouths, for, according to Dale, giving them a mouth would mean the heavens would open and the rain would never cease.

PROVENANCE Neil McLeod Fine Art, Vic Cat No. NM1975 Private Collection, Vic Private Collection Qld

“Whites have the bible. We have our Wandjinas. We have to go to these places else we are empty,” said Dale. These Wandjina sites, located throughout the Kimberley, are over 60,000 years old and are painted on rock overhangs, often marked by striking geological features like the Djalala or ‘marking stones’ that indicate their presence.

As one of the last of the dwindling generation of old men who possessed complete knowledge of the rituals, law, and culture of his people, Jack Dale was a vital link to the past.

A custodian of ancient stories about the land and its creation, his most compelling and mysterious works focus on the Wandjina and other important spirit beings that created the land and instituted the laws that govern human behaviour. Wandjinas are powerful fertility spirits, responsible for the life-giving monsoon rains. Jack believed that the ‘big boss’ Wandjina could rally his attendants when conflict occurred

For health reasons, Dale spent the last years of his life in the closest town, Derby. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Grand Old Man of the Kimberley’, Jack was a highly respected tribal elder, both for his custodianship of Ceremonial Law and for his skill as a bushman.

He came to painting late in life, after many hard-working years as a stockman. Even then, he was revered for his extensive knowledge and admired for his physical strength and determined attitude. This, he relived and communicated in his painting, sharing with an international audience a powerful experience of the inimitable Kimberley genius precariously balanced at the crossroads of change.

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LOT #14 PIRRMANGKA NAPANANGKA (C.1945 - 2001) Tjintjintjin, 1999 122 x 91 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. PN9910242 Vivien Anderson Gallery, Vic Private Collection, Vic Pirrmangka Napanangka was born at Tjintjintjin to the north-west of Lake Mackay. She was the daughter of Tutuma Tjapangati and Inyuwa Nampitjin, both recognised artists working for Papunya Tula Artists. Napanangka started painting during the Haasts Bluff - Kintore painting project in 1994 and often painted alongside her sister, Walangkura Napanangka.

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This painting depicts designs relating to the site of Tjintjintjin, west of Kintore community. There is a series of rockholes at this site and an underground cave. In ancestral times, an old lady travelled to Tjintjintjin from Malparinga, north-west of the Kintore community. She also visited the soakage water sites of Ngatanga and Yaranga, which are all west of Mantati Outstation. She then travelled further east to Muruntji, southwest of Mt Liebig. At Muruntji she was accosted by one of a group of boys. She chased them and caught all but the culprit, who managed to escape. She killed the others and cooked them in the fire. She then travelled to Kaltarra where she entered the earth.

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LOT #15 ALEC MINGELMANGANU (C.1905 - 1981) Wandjina, 1975 51 x 23 cm (irregular) | 64.5 x 37.5 cm (frame) natural earth pigment on bark EST $20,000 - 30,000 PROVENANCE Field Collected by Kim Akerman, NSW Written Verso:

that the work, while a brilliant example of Kimberley Aboriginal art, was undoubtedly an early ethnographic piece that consequently did not meet the conditions of the competition – i.e. a work executed within the last 12 months. On being informed, however, that the work was in fact an original and contemporary piece, the judge persuaded the West Kimberley Shire Council to make a payment equivalent to the value of first prize to the artist.

To be held in trust for Piers Akerman a rare Aboriginal bark painting depicting a Wandjina spirit figure To be kept in family/friends (sic) very magic bark of sacred creator From 3/77 Bless you and may we continue friendship from brother Kim

Alec Mingelmanganu was first formally exhibited in the First Wandjina Artist exhibition at Aboriginal Traditional Arts Perth in 1976. Art dealer Mary Macha introduced him to painting on canvas in 1979 and, in 1980, she organised Alec’s first solo exhibition in Perth. It was while in Perth that Alec had the opportunity to view works by other artists that had been painted on monumental canvases. As a result of this experience, Mingelmanganu was to paint four exceptionally large works of his own prior to his death.

Alec Mingelmanganu’s Wandjina paintings were first recognised by the public in mid-1975, when an ochre on bark painting under the title ‘Austral Gothic’ was entered into the Boab Festival Art Competition, Derby, WA by Kim Akerman. Unfor tunately, the judge considered

This particular painting was produced in 1975, before stable fixatives in the form of commercial wood glues had been introduced to Kimberley artists.This painting was gifted to Akerman’s brother Piers and sister-in-law Suzanne in the late 1970s.

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LOT #16 JIMMY MIJAU MIJAU (C.1897 - C.1985) Mimih Dancers, 1965 64 x 25 (bark size) | 91 x 47 cm (frame) natural earth pigments on bark EST $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Collected at Minjilang, Croker Island, Western Arnhem Land, NT Aboriginal and Pacific Art Gallery, NSW Private Collection, NSW From the 1940s onward, Jimmy Mijau Mijau lived amongst the group of artists on Minjilang (Croker Island) in Western Arnhem Land. The group included Samuel Wagbara, David Yirawala, Paddy Compass Namatbara, and January Nangunyari Namiridali. Mijau Mijau, in particular, assisted the eminent anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt, for whom he produced paintings as well as moulded clay figures. He exhibited his work for the first time in 1957, as part of the exhibition Australian Aboriginal Art, Arnhem Land Paintings on Bark and Carved Human Figures, at the Western Australian Museum, Perth, curated by the Berndts. Other prominent collectors of his work were Karel Kupka and Edward L. Ruhe. The artist is represented in most major public collections in Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia, as well as several overseas museums including the Musee du quai Branly in Paris.

Mijau Mijau created bark paintings throughout the 1950s and 1960s, in a style which had persisted as cave art for centuries without change. Only a handful of artists, all old men, kept this art form alive at the time. In this work, Mijau Mijau has depicted Epadabat, little spirit people about eighteen inches (45 cms) high.They are rarely seen but can be heard singing in the swamps on moonlit nights.

LOT #17 attrib. BININYUWUY BUNUMBIRR (1928 - 1982) Banumbu, 1970 95 x 20 x 15 cm natural earth pigment on wood EST $1,800 - 2,500 PROVENANCE Milingimbi Methodist Mission, Central Arnhem Land, NT Private Collection, Vic The code number G106040 is written on the sticker on its stand.

Binyinyuwuy was one of the most renowned Yolngu artists of the period 1960-1980. Trained in his craft by tribal elders, he went through initiation in the bush. He painted with earth pigments, pipe clay and other natural materials mixed with orchid juice as a fixative. His brushes were human hair, the chewed tips of twigs, and small bird feathers. This sculpture represents the creator spirit Banumbu the great guardian spirit of the Djambarrpuyngu people and guardian of Banumbirr, the Morning Star, from which Bininyuwuy derived his clan name.

The Dreamtime story relates that each evening Banumbu allowed his star to rise through the clouds and to traverse the heavens. As dawn comes and the other stars fade, Banumbu pulls on the string which is tied to the Morning Star, to return it to its dilly bags in which it is kept during the daylight hours.

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LOT #18 WALLY MANDARRK (1915 - 1987) Wayarra (Male and Female Spirits), 1980 120 x 83 cm natural earth pigments on bark EST $4,500 - 6,500 PROVENANCE Painted in the Maningrida region, Central Arnhem Land, NT Private Collection, NSW Born around 1915, Wally Mandarrk grew up in south-central Arnhem Land and did not meet a European until 1946. He remained a private, traditional man, avoiding contact with Balanda (non-Indigenous people) until the 1960s.

Mandarrk’s works are distinctive for the simple, stocky outline of his figures, infilled with bands of red, white, and yellow cross-hatching (rarrk) on a plain red background. Many of his paintings depict Wayarra, profane ghost or demon spirits. The existence of these spirits is often the reason certain areas are not visited and regarded as dangerous places.

Mandarrk’s works were collected during the 1948 American-Australian scientific expedition to Arnhem Land. They were also bought by the Maningrida art centre in its earliest days. His works have been included in exhibitions such as Power of the Land: Masterpieces of Aboriginal Art at the National Gallery of Victoria (1994), the international touring exhibition Aratjara - Art of the First Australians (1993-4), Kunwinjku Bim at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1984-5, and Art of Aboriginal Australia, which toured North America in 1974-76.

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LOT #19 OTTO PAREROULTJA (1914 - 1973) The Hills Behind Hermannsberg, 1954 28 x 72 cm | 55.5 x 98.5 cm (frame) watercolour on paper EST $2,000 - 3,000 PROVENANCE Purchased from the artist, by the District Officer, Hermannsburg Mission circa 1955.

Private Collection, Tas Thence by descent Re-mounted and framed by Jarmans the Picture Framers, Hawthorn Vic in 2015 using materials employed for the Hermannsburg watercolours in the collection of the NGA Otto Pareroultja was just 12 years younger than Albert Namatjira and the oldest of three brothers that Rex Battarbee referred to as the ‘breakaway group’ amongst the generation that followed. When he first began painting in 1947, there were those who inferred that his works resonated with those of European modernists such as Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, in that his landscapes were distinguished by brilliant colour, dense patterning and ‘rhythmic pulsation’.

Though Pareroultja never departed from the use of watercolour over the course of his artistic career, his style and subject matter became markedly ‘more Aboriginal’, and, with this gradual transition, much stronger. The sense of movement inherent in his paintings is reminiscent of Dreaming narratives. Ted Strehlow and Rex Battarbee both pointed out the connections between the swirling parallel lines and concentric circles of Otto’s paintings and the designs found on the sacred ‘tjuringa’ stones associated with men’s ceremonial life. It is this ‘traditional resonance’ in his painting that distinguishes Pareroultja from other artists of the Hermannsburg School.

Pareroultja’s desert landscapes exhibit a distinct dynamic originality.The best of these were painted late in a career that spanned twenty years, ending in 1967 even though he lived until the early 1990s. His paintings predominantly depict sacred sites - although at the time of Pareroultja’s painting they may not have been recognised as such outside of their community context. Pareroultja was not overly concerned with correct perspective in his landscape. His forte was not artistic realism. While we have no indication that he aimed for this, the merit of a painting

by Otto Pareroultja lies in the visual articulation of certain Indigenous elements, rendered through European technique.

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LOT #20 ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902 - 1959) Western MacDonnell Landscape, 1950 36 x 54 cm | 65 x 81 cm (frame) watercolour over pencil on paper EST $35,000 - 45,000 PROVENANCE Private Collection, NSW Thence by descent, ACT Albert Namatjira began painting in the early 1930s. By the time of his death almost thirty years later, his romantic depictions of the Western MacDonnell Ranges, Mount Sonder, and the surrounding desert had become synonymous with our collective vision of the Australian outback, Namatjira was able to capture the subtleties of colour as the desert changes from the soft tones of summer heat to the rich hues of the early morning and late evening light.The majority of his paintings

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lack a central focal point, with visual emphasis on the edges holding the composition in balance. His watercolours typically capture the high colouring of the desert landscape, the gorges and valleys of the country of his birth, and his Dreaming. Interestingly, Namatjira painted most of his desert country from an elevated point of view, as if looking down, ever so slightly on the landscape.

Following his early success, he took a number of other Aranda artists, including his sons Enos and Oscar and the three Pareroultja brothers, on his painting expeditions with him. They spawned a movement of naturalistic watercolours in the European tradition of classical landscape painting. The movement, termed the Hermannsberg school – the name of the Lutheran church mission station where Albert was born, was the first significant transitional art movement to emerge from Aboriginal Australia.

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LOT #21 EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) Emily’s Country, 1995 120 x 90 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $25,000 - 35,000 PROVENANCE Aboriginal Gallery of Dreaming, Vic Cat No. 94259 Contemporary Australian Visions, Vic Private Collection, Vic Emily Kame Kngwarreye is widely regarded as Australia’s most important and successful Aboriginal artist. Her remarkable career lasted just 7 years until her passing at 86 years of age in 1996. The painterly quality and originality of her works extended her influence far beyond the reach of Aboriginal art, attracting an international audience ready to acclaim her new and innovative style.

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This thick-textured fusion of deep-ochred yellow and purple hues gives a concentrated view of the desert’s food sources after rain. Often hidden from view, these seed, fruit, and root vegetables are enormously bountiful. The requirement to understand the life cycles of all bush foods is necessary to survival.

The dramatic transformation of the desert – from bare to abundant – is a display of the desert’s power. Linked into this is women’s ceremonial life (awelye), based on the belief that these ceremonies help nurture the desert food sources and assure future fertile generations.

LOT #22 MINNIE PWERLE (1910 - 2006) Awelye Atnwengerrp, 2004 120 x 90 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $5,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Dacou Gallery, SA Cat No. 04706 Fireworks Gallery, Qld Cat No. FW8823 Private Collection, Vic Minnie Pwerle, whose husband was the brother of famed artist Emily Kngwarreye, began painting her country Atnwengerrp and its associated Dreamings in earnest at 77 years of age. While Minnie resembles Emily in her prodigious output and gestural vigour, it is the bush melon and its seed, rather than the yam, or bush potato, which were her own Dreamings and the subject of her art.

The bush melon fruit is collected by women and either eaten immediately or cut into pieces, skewered onto lengths of wood, and dried to be eaten over the coming months, when bush tucker is scarce. In this soft palette work by the artist, Awelye Atnwengerrp is represented by delicate lines painted gesturally in pink, lilac, and yellow ochre, without reference to the melon seeds that dominate the majority of her work. The designs painted on women’s torsos during ceremony evoke the presence of women dancing by fire light.

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LOT #23 GABRIELLA POSSUM NUNGURRAYI (1967 - ) My Grandmother’s Country, 2019 141 x 205 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Aranda Art, Vic Cat No. 18229 Private Collection, Vic The artist is portraying the country of her grandmother, Long Rose Nungala - the wife of one Pound Jimmy and the mother of Clifford Possum. It is in the Mount Allan region (Yuelumu), 300km north-west of Alice Springs, the ancestral homeland of the Anmatyerre people.

Gabriella has outlined the general geography, showing the sand hills, fresh water soakages, dried salty swamps, and rockholes that supply drinking water in times of drought. The vegetation includes Spinifex grass, wild bush wheat, honey flowers for sugar bag (native bee honey), as well as the bush tucker which grows underground, such as sweet yams.

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The Dreamtime lore relates the regeneration of plant life after rain, the life cycle of the yam plant, and the areas where they can be found. All of this information is traditionally transmitted through song, dance, and ceremony. This painting summarises the process. The secret aspects are inferred by the groups of U shapes that are clustered together. They indicate that all of the grandmothers (Nungala’s) are painting themselves with yellow, red, and white ochre (sometimes mixed together to produce pink) and teaching their granddaughters (Nungarrayi’s) the procedures that they must follow to maintain and nurture the diverse bush foods in this county. Their camp fires are also indicated. All of this information is considered necessary for the survival of the Anmatyerre people who have traditionally inhabited this region.

LOT #24 CORY WARKATU SURPRISE (1929 - 2011) Pitill Jila, 2007 116.5 x 89.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas EST $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Mangkaja Arts, WA Cat No. 107/07 Private Collection, NSW Cory Surprise was a highly regarded, award-winning contemporary artist from Fitzroy Crossing, known for her uninhibited painting style.

She was born at Tapu, her father’s country, in the Great Sandy Desert.

Her parents both died there when she was still a baby. Cory managed to escape the outside world by staying with her extended family until she walked out of the bush as a young woman having already been inducted into the law. As a result, she knew her country intimately, including all the places to find water, all the significant sites, and how to find food.

In time she met and married the well known artist Peter Skipper, who worked as a contractor building fences. They travelled together and she worked as a camp cook and goat herd. They worked at Quanbun Downs, Jubilee Station, Yiyili, and Cherrabun Station before settling at GoGo Station (near Fitzroy Crossing) for more than 20 years. Finally, they moved into the larger township at Fitzroy Crossing in the 1950s.

Cory first started painting at Karrayili Adult Education Centre in the early 1980s when in her 50s. Her paintings are all about her country, including jilji [sand hills], jumu [soak water], jila [permanent waterholes], and jiwari [rock holes], pamarr [hills and rock country], mangarri [vegetable food] and kuyu [meat].

This work depicts Jilji (sandhills) at her birthplace deep in the Great Sandy Desert.

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LOT #25 YANNIMA TOMMY WATSON (C.1935 - 2017) Untitled (Artist’s Country), 2015 71 x 56 cm | 75 x 60 cm (frame) synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $9,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Yanda Art, NT Cat No. TW201525 Private Collection, Vic Pitjantjatjara elder Tommy Watson gained wide acclaim in an astonishingly short amount of time. His first works were created at the community arts centre in Irrunytju, 12 km south-west of the tri-state border where the Northern Territory, Western Australia, and South Australia meet. This was just 44 kilometres east of Anamarapiti, where he was born c.1935.Though he recalled visiting Papunya in his youth and observing the birth of the art movement there, he did not take up painting for another 30 years.

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According to the creation story for this area, a major battle took place between the White Cockatoo and the Eagle, during which white feathers were scattered and the landscape became indented by the entangled combatants crashing to the ground repeatedly. Grounded in Tommy’s paintings are rockholes, mountain ranges, and creek-beds, transmitted in waves of light. Many of his paintings are, in fact, evocative of nuclear shock waves, light waves, and explosions.

His debut at the 2002 Desert Mob show in Alice Springs was followed by his participation in a series of group exhibitions from which his reputation gained momentum. His prominence as an artist of the highest renown was ultimately cemented when, in 2006, he was commissioned to create a permanent installation at Musee du Quai Branly, in Paris.

“ I paint works from my heart. I can’t do those works again … it can’t be real Dreaming if I do ”

- Yannima Tommy Watson

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LOT #26 PULPURRU DAVIES (1943 - ) Nyukur, west of Mina Mina, 2007 151 x 101 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Kayili Artists, NT Cat No. 07-004 Aboriginal and Pacific Art Gallery, NSW Private Collection, NSW Pulpurru Davies grew up living a traditional, nomadic life with her family, as they moved from waterhole to waterhole in their traditional country. They lived this way up until the 1960s, by which time they were one of the last groups of nomadic people in Australia.

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This painting depicts a part of the Wati Kutjara (Two Men) Dreaming myth, which takes place at Nyukur, a site with two rockholes west of Mina Mina.Two women are confronted by the Wati Kutjarra, who want to see what they are carrying.The women hide their special possessions underneath them as they sit down. The men travel on towards Lake Kulutjarra, where they find mingkurlpa (bush tobacco) before heading back towards Mulayaritjan to see the women again. They watch them cry and sing. One of them has lost her special dog, which is white like Pintalypa (bush tomato before it is ripe). She is wailing for her dog and singing to her female companion: “Where are we going to look, where

LOT #27 LORNA NAPARRULA FENCER (C.1925 - 2006) Boomerang, 1998 150 x 100 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas EST $4,500 - 6,500 PROVENANCE Katherine Art Gallery, NT Cat No. P-923 Coo-ee Aboriginal Art Gallery, NSW Artback, NT Private Collection, NSW EXHIBITED & LITERATURE ‘Yulyurlu Lorna Fencer Napurrurla’, retrospective touring exhibition and catalogue, Margie West, page 112

Lorna Napurrula Fencer was a senior Warlpiri artist born at Yartulu Yartulu. She was custodian of the inherited lands of Yumurrpa in the Tanami Desert. She began painting in the mid 1980s and is now widely acknowledged as one of the great Warlpiri artists from Lajamanu.

She was a custodian of the Dreamings associated with bush potato, caterpillar, bush onion, yam, bush tomato, bush plum, many different seeds, and, importantly, water.

This painting tells the Dreamtime story of men of the Tjupurrula and Tjakamarra skin groups hunting for foods to eat. They are shown disguised amongst their boomerangs in this lively and expressive work by an artist for whom these skin groups are brother and father.

This work was featured in the artist’s posthumous touring retrospective exhibition, Yulyurlu.

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LOT #28 MITJILI NAPANANGKA GIBSON (1930 - 2010) Wirnparrku, 2010 122 x 91 cm | 124 x 94 cm (framed) synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $10,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Gallery Gondwana, NT Cat No. 9858MN Private Collection, Vic Mitjili Napanangka Gibson, inspired by her niece, Dorothy Napangardi, began painting on canvas in 2006, the year this work was created. They shared many Dreaming stories, in particular those associated with Mina Mina, a sacred site for the Napanangka and Napangardi skin groups on Warlpiri land.

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Fluent in both Pintupi and Warlpiri languages, Mitjili could trace her heritage to those members of the Pintupi whose first contact with white people was a meeting with Donald Thompson’s exploration party in 1957. While most Pintupi moved north towards Balgo or east towards Papunya, Mitjili Napanangka Gibson’s small family group moved to the Warlpiri community of Yuendumu.

In this painting, Mitjili has depicted a part of a long narrative Dreaming story about two young girls. Their tracks are shown as they walk between sites around the Murruwa area, where they finally rested.

LOT #29 MINNIE PWERLE (1910 - 2006) Awelye - Atnwengerrp, 2003 92 x 153 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $8,000 - 10,000 PROVENANCE Gundooee, NSW Cat No. GUN203099 Private Collection, SA Accompanied by 3 images of Minnie Pwerle painting this artwork The manner in which Minnie Pwerle created her works was the result of an urgency to reconnect to the past and keep the Dreaming a living reality. Painting after painting, she depicted the body designs applied to women’s breasts and limbs for the regular ceremonial revivification of her country.

These bold linear patterns of stripes and curves evoke the movement of the women as they dance during ceremony. After smearing their bodies with animal fat, they trace these designs onto their breasts, arms and thighs, singing as each woman takes her turn being ‘painted up’.

Then, often by firelight, they dance in formation to ritual singing. The songs relate to the Dreamtime stories of ancestral travel, as well as plants, animals, and natural forces.

Awelye - Women’s Ceremony - demonstrates respect for the land. In performing these ceremonies, they ensure well-being and happiness within their community.

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LOT #30 JUDY NAPANGARDI WATSON (C.1925 - 2016) Mina Mina, 2006 118 x 179 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $15,000 - 20,000 PROVENANCE Ngintaka Arts, NT Cooee Art, NSW Private Collection, NSW Judy Watson was born at Yarungkanji, Mt. Doreen Station, around 1935, at the time when many Warlpiri and other Central and Western Desert peoples were living a traditional nomadic life. With her family, Judy made many trips on foot to her country and lived for long periods at Mina Mina and Yingipurlangu, her ancestral homeland on the border of the Tanami and Gibson Deserts. Here, her family lived on bush tucker species such as wanakiji, bush plums, yakajirri, bush tomatoes, and wardapi, sand goanna.

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Judy was taught to paint by her elder sister, Maggie Napangardi Watson, who she painted alongside at Warlukurlangu art centre for a number of years while developing her own unique style.

Though small in stature, Judy had ten children. She was a woman of incredible energy and this is seen in her work through her dynamic use of colour in her energetic ‘dragged dotting’ style. She was at the forefront of a move towards more abstract rendering of Jukurrpa by Warlpiri artists. Still, her work retains strong kurruwarri – the details which tell of the sacredness of place and song in her culture.

LOT #31 SALLY (MIRDIDINGKINGATHI JUWARNDA) GABORI (1924 - 2015) The Ngarrawurda (Bluefish), 2005 91 x 120 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Mornington Island Arts, Qld Cat No. 653-C-SG-1105 The Harding Collection, NSW LITERATURE Cf. For a stylistically similar work see Mirdidingkingathi Sally Gabori, Land of All, QAGOMA, 2016, pp 60-61 Sally Gabori first picked up a paintbrush in 2005, at 81 years of age. The Lardil people in the Kaiadilt community had little exposure to fine art, or really any comparable form of mark-making, prior to that time.Traditional

tools, objects, or bodies were scarcely painted. The only recorded art that related their stories was a group of drawings, made at the request of ethnologist Norman B Tindale during his expedition to Bentinck Island in 1960, now housed in the South Australian Museum.

Previously known as a weaver of traditional bags, baskets, and nets, Gabori became the first Kaiadilt person to paint. Within months, she developed both in confidence and technique and was producing fourand-a-half metre paintings crowded with hundreds of concentric circles.

This work conjures a frenzied school of fish, erupting from the bountiful reef-laden waters around Bentinck Island to feed on smaller fish or other marine creatures just below the surface. As each fish breaks through, a wave radiates for a few seconds. These paintings allude to schools of mullet, queen fish, mackerel, or tuna, but never figuratively depict them.

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LOT #32 KATHLEEN NGAL (1930 - ) Anwekety - Bush Plum Dreaming, 2006 120 x 60 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $1,800 - 2,500 PROVENANCE Mbantua Gallery, NT Cat No. MB032844 Private Collection, NSW Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and photo of the artist with the painting Kathleen’s works can be interpreted as sophisticated mind maps, depicting cultural knowledge of her country as well as its physical geography.

Thousands of dots of colour are rained across her brilliant canvases, denoting the varied flora and geographical locations of the Bush Plum.

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The site depicted is Arlperre on Utopia Station. This is country that belongs to the Ngal and Kemarr custodians, who paint the Bush Plum or Conkleberry. It only thrives once every seven years, after huge storms.

Kathleen’s paintings can be predominantly white, representing the petals of its flowers, or a range of orange, red, blue, purple, and yellow, depending on the different degrees of ripeness of the plum.

In this work, we see the plant in flower with a suggestion of stages in the ripening of the fruit.

LOT #33 GLORIA PETYARRE (1942 - ) Bush Medicine Leaves, 2006 121 x 150 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas EST $12,000 - 16,000 PROVENANCE Dacou Gallery, SA Cat No. DG06936 Lawson~Menzies, Aboriginal Art, Sydney, November 2006, Lot No. 119 Private Collection, USA Raised in a remote part of the Eastern Desert and initiated into Anmatyerre law and traditions, Gloria Petyarre participated in the first art programs organised at Utopia in 1977, when she was 39 years of age. These early batik-making workshops marked the emergence of Aboriginal women artists as a force in the desert painting movement.

This highly accomplished work represents the leaves of the Kurrajong tree, used in the Utopia region to treat a variety of ailments. The women collect the leaves, then dry and mix them with Kangaroo fat in order to extract the plant’s medicinal qualities. The significance of the Kurrajong tree and the part it plays in healing is celebrated in the Women’s Awelye ceremonies.

In painting the Bush Medicine Leaf story, Gloria pays homage to the spirit of the medicinal plant. By re-creating its image, she encourages its regeneration, so that her people can continue to benefit from its healing powers.

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LOT #34 DOROTHY NAPANGARDI (C.1956 - 2013) Karntakurlangu Tjukurrpa, 2005 122 x 76 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $12,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Gallery Gondwana Fine Art, NT Cat No. 13-11509 Private Collection, NT And They Danced Their Way Across Country, October 2018, Cooee Art Paddington, NSW Regarded as one of the leading artists of the contemporary Aboriginal Art movement, Dorothy Napangardi created her own unique language to describe her homelands.This work captures the rolling sandhills

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in her father’s countr y at Lake McKay. Dorothy’s networks of dotted lines form both a micro and a macro study of the land, creating the homeland topography while telling a story of the ancestral tracks.

Her extraordinary spatial ability enabled her to create mimetic lines of dots, tracing the travels of her ancestors as they danced their way through the saltpans, spinifex, and sand hills during the earth’s creation.

In 2001, Dorothy Napangardi was the recipient of the 18th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. The following year, an extensive retrospective of her work was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

LOT #35 KATHLEEN PETYARRE (1940 - 2018) My Country, 2002 122 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $12,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Gallerie Australia, SA Cat No. GAKP0802360 Cooee Gallery, NSW Private Collection, NSW Katheen Petyarre is best known for her finely wrought, intimate renditions of the vast landscapes in the Eastern Desert. These were created during the epic journeys of her Dreaming ancestor and totem, the tiny Thorny Devil Lizard, also referred to as ‘that Old Woman Mountain Devil’.

This tiny desert creature is believed to have created the vast desert home of the Eastern Anmatjerre people by painstakingly moving the sand, grain by grain since the dawn of time. Petyarre and her clanswomen are the lizard’s descendants and have therefore inherited the responsibility in caring for and nurturing the vast landscape that she depicts so intimately and carefully in her paintings.

Petyarre’s process leading to these sumptuous paintings took years to perfect. In this painting, she presents an aerial view composition of her sacred Dreaming site (home of the Mountain Devil Lizard) in the vicinity of Mosquito Bore on Utopia Station. It is here, at this site, that the men and women of the eastern Anmatyerre language conduct important secret and sacred initiation ceremonies. This Dreaming site is situated in the artist’s father’s country and the general locality is identified by a group of sand-hills. The painting portrays the area scattered with seeds, summer bush flowers, and Spinifex grasses. The sand-hills conceal a sacred Women’s Dreaming site associated with the green pea (antweth).

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LOT #36 PEG LEG TJAMPITJINPA (1920 - 2006) Tingari at Parayilypil, 2002 182 x 242 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $45,000 - 65,000 PROVENANCE Yanda Fine Arts, NT Cat No. PL200226 Agathon Galleries, Vic Private Collection, NSW The Tingari Cycle is a secret song cycle sacred to initiated men. The Tingari are Dreamtime Beings who travelled across the landscape performing ceremonies to create and shape the country associated with Dreaming sites. The Tingari ancestors gathered at these sites for

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Maliera (initiation) ceremonies. The sites take the form of, and are located at, significant rockholes, sand hills, sacred mountains, and water soakages in the Western Desert. Tingari may be poetically interpreted as song-line paintings relating to the songs (of the people) and creation stories (of places) in Pintupi mythology.

Pegleg was Pinta Pinta Tjapanangka’s friend. It has been noted that their works, in their economy of form and colour, came to symbolise a return to the scale and temperament of the early years. [ref: H. Perkins and H. Fink ed., Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, AGNSW, 2000, p184]

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LOT #37 NYURAPAYIA (MRS BENNETT) NAMPITJINPA (1935 - 2013) Untitled, 2007 121 x 152 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $30,000 - 40,000 PROVENANCE Yanda Art, NT Cat No. MRSB200742 Desert Dart Distributors, SA Private Collection, SA Accompanied by 29 images of Mrs Bennett creating the artwork and a hardcopy catalogue ‘The Art of Nyurapayia Nampitjinpa (Mrs Bennett)’ supplied by vendor

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Nyurapayia Nampitjinpa was born in Pitjantjatjara country, near the site of today’s Docker River community. She spent much of her childhood at Pangkupirri, a set of sheltered rockholes deep in the range-folds of the Gibson Desert, and saw no white men until she was in her teens. By the time she walked in from the bush to the ration depot at Haasts Bluff and encountered mission life, she had become a healer and was soon recognised as a person of great ritual authority. She moved to Kintore, the new western settlement of the Pintupi, closer to her traditional lands. In the 1980s she moved on to Tjukurla, across the West Australian border.

Nyurapayia was a close associate of the key painters who shaped the women’s painting movement in the early to mid-1990s. Her depictions of the sand-dune country and surrounding rocky outcrops bear a relationship to the designs used for body painting during the Inma ceremonial dance.At the time of her death in February 2013, Nyurapayia had reached the pinnacle of desert law and sacred knowledge and was revered by women throughout the Western Desert.

LOT #38 NELLIE STEWART (1938 - 2012) Two Sisters at Nyapari, 2011 147 x 200 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas EST $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Tjungu Palya, SA Cat No. TPNS10286 Private Collection, NSW Nellie was born in the bush at Pipalyatjara, her father’s country, in the late 1930s. Her mother is from Irrunytju and is Kuntjil Cooper’s older sister. As a young girl, Nellie attended school at the Ernabella Mission and later worked in Alice Springs teaching Pitjantjatjara language with her husband. She began painting in 2007 when she moved to Nyapari with her family.

Nellie Stewart is a senior Pitjantjatjara woman. Her works are bold and colourful landscapes depicting country. They incorporate landmarks created during epic spirit journeys and the activities of creation ancestors.

Two sisters are at Nyapari during the Dreamtime. The elder sister is teaching the younger sister ceremonial law. They are singing and dancing together.They were travelling to Punuwara and travelled on to Docker River in the Northern Territory.

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LOT #39 YANNIMA TOMMY WATSON (C.1935 - 2017) Untitled (Artist’s Country), 2010 90 x 158 cm | 93 x 161 cm (frame) synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $13,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Agathon Galleries, NSW Cat No. AGTW0610100209 Private Collection, Tas Pitjantjatjara elder Tommy Watson gained wide acclaim in an astonishingly short amount of time. His first works were created at the community arts centre in Irrunytju, 12 kms south-west of the tri-state border where the Northern Territory, Western Australia, and South Australia meet. This was just 44 kilometres east of Anamarapiti, where he was born c.1935. Though he recalled visiting Papunya in his youth and observing the birth of the art movement there, he did not take up painting for another 30 years.

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His debut at the 2002 Desert Mob exhibition in Alice Springs was followed by his participation in a series of group exhibitions from which his reputation gained momentum. His prominence as an artist of the highest renown was ultimately cemented when, in 2006, he was commissioned to create a permanent installation at Musee du Quai Branly, in Paris.

Grounded in his paintings are rockholes, mountain ranges, and creekbeds transmitted in waves of light. Many of his paintings are, in fact, evocative of nuclear shock waves, light waves, and explosions.

The artist has depicted the country of his birth, not far from Kata Juta and Uluru. According to the creation story for this area, a major battle took place between the White Cockatoo and the Eagle, during which white feathers were scattered and the landscape became indented by the entangled combatants crashing to the ground repeatedly. Here, we see the subterranean streams that filled these depressions with water and the circular amphitheatre that was created by the sweep of wings.

In keeping with the depiction of Dreaming stories throughout the Western Desert, the landscape is rendered sacred and numinous through the actions of these mythic creator beings during its formation.

LOT #40 SHANE PICKETT (1957 - 2010) Wanyarang Sun Setting in the Warm Glow, 2007 183 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas EST $9,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Diane Mossenson Fine Art, WA Cat No. WAC 185/07 Private Collection, NSW The pre-eminent Nyoongar artist of his time, Shane Pickett was born in Quairading (Ballardung Country) in the south-west of Western Australia.

Combining his deep knowledge and concern for Nyoongar culture with a confident and individual style of gestural abstraction, Pickett’s paintings resonate with a profound but subtle immediacy. They are complex visual metaphors for the persistence of Nyoongar culture against the colonising tide of modernity.

In this lovely work, the artist evokes the spirit of his country while removing almost all recognisable elements of the landscape. He draws the viewers attention to the notion of a horizon while colour plays across dramatically smeared impasto surface. Juxtaposed are sections of gentler tonal layering and threads of emblematic dotting across the canvas.

Pickett was selected as a finalist in numerous major art prizes, including the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. In 2006, he was awarded first prizes at the Sunshine Coast Art Prize and Joondalup Invitation Art Award.

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LOT #41 QUEENIE MCKENZIE NAKARA (1930 - 1998) Winnabun Springs, 1996 150 x 120 cm natural earth pigment on canvas EST $20,000 - 30,000 PROVENANCE Warmun Traditional Artists, WA Cat No. QM0025 Deutscher & Hackett, Aboriginal Art, April 2012 Private Collection, Vic Queenie McKenzie was born c.1930 at the Old Texas station on the Ord River in the north-west of Western Australia. As a young girl, she cooked for the stockmen, tending and riding horses and journeying as they drove cattle across the vast pastoral region of the north.

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During the 1970s, the establishment of the Warmun community drew her tribe together once more, becoming a cultural focal point within the Kimberley area. Queenie played a leading role in restoring her people’s culture and working toward a secure future. Involvement in community affairs led her to experiment with representational art as an educational tool in the local school, where she taught Gija language and cultural traditions. By this time, Rover Thomas was receiving recognition and income from his painting practice and he encouraged Queenie’s first artistic experiments. Mixing the traditional ochres herself, Queenie liked to create unique colours, particularly the soft pinks and purples which became the recognisable hallmarks of her style.

This painting is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Warmun Traditional Artists that states: ‘Queenie tells us of “Woman’s Country” on Texas Downs Station around Winnabun Springs, where men must not go because women hold ceremonies there.’

Just below where the spring (the black line running down the middle) comes out of the hills to join Blackfella Creek, we see a white flat rock.

This is where the clear fresh water is collected all year round.

LOT #42 ROVER JOOLAMA THOMAS (1926 - 1998) Mook Mook the Owl Woman, 1995 102 x 183 cm synthetic polymer paint & natural earth pigment on canvas EST $35,000 - 45,000 PROVENANCE Painted by Rover Thomas during his residency at the Burrinja Gallery, Upwey, Dandenongs, 1995 Private Collection, Vic Owls are central figures in Kimberley cosmology, said to have instituted many important cultural practices.They are connected to the Wandjina creator beings.The Wandjina are predominant in western and northern Kimberley, however, not so much in the east, where Rover Thomas lived and painted.

The Mook Mook Owl is a major feature of the Krill Krill ceremony, created by Rover Thomas and Paddy Jaminji in the late 1970s. The owl is found in a cave at the Blue Tongue Lizard Dreaming site, adjacent to Pompei Pillar near the turnoff to the Argyle Diamond Mine. The cave site is called Tunnel Creek. Owls are said to be associated with birth and death amongst Gija people.

In the Narrangunny (Dreaming story), an Aboriginal woman was sitting at a waterhole fishing for bream. After catching a few fish, she heard a fearsome noise coming from above. Thinking it was the ‘devil-devil’, she threw everything in the air and ran to her camp screaming. A few of the community’s bravest men were dispatched to investigate the frightening sound. What they found while checking a small cave above the fishing hole were owls, ‘damboyn’, sitting in the darkness making their ‘mook-mook’ call; the sound was merely amplified by the cave walls.

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LOT #43 ROVERTHOMAS (1926 - 1998) & JACK BRITTEN (C.1921 - 2001) Nightdance, 1996 75 x 55 cm natural earth pigments on paper EST $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Narrungunny Art Traders, WA Cat No. N-0310-RTJB Private Collection, WA Accompanied by a certificate including a photo of Jack Britten and Rover Thomas holding the artwork together Rover Tjomas was born at Koonawaratji, near Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route in the Western Desert region of Western Australia. He lived ‘the old way’ in the bush, hunting and gathering desert food with his family. At that time, Gudiyas (white people), usually drovers, would abduct young boys for work on Kimberley cattle stations. At 11 years of age, he was taken by the drover Wally Dowling to Bililuna, at the top of the Canning Stock Route, and then to Bow River and Texas 58

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Downs near Warmun, where he learned his droving and fencing skills.

He underwent tribal initiation and was given his skin name, Joolama, in the East Kimberley region, far to the north of his own country.

Jack Britten was born and raised in the bush in the lands to the south of Turkey Creek, west of the Bungle Bungles over which he became the senior custodian and traditional owner. He remembered watching the camel wagon trains, with their Afghan drivers with supplies for the outstations, and the excitement of his first encounter with a motor vehicle. His horsemanship was legendary when he worked as a stockman on many East Kimberley pastoral leases, including Mabel Downs, Bow River, Lissadell, Texas Downs, and the old Bungle Bungles and Tickalara Cattle Stations. Jack’s knowledge of the myths and legends of the Dreamtime (Narrangunny) was vast and enabled him to produce hundreds of canvasses depicting his country.

In this charming work on Arches cotton rag paper, these two masters depict the dancers seen at Turkey Creek corroborees, conducted under moonlight. The men hold boomerangs as they dance, clapping in time with the rhythm of the music. Their bodies, faces, and tall headdresses are decorated with designs of white clay, illuminated by the fire at night.

LOT #44 CHARLIE MARSHALL TJUNGURRAYI (1940 - ) Untitled, 2002 31 x 31 cm each | 33 x 33 cm (framed each) synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $1,200 - 1,800 PROVENANCE Watiyawanu Artists, NT Cat No. 77/662 Private Collection, Vic Private Collection, NSW Charlie Marshall is a Warlpiri artist born at Kuratjarrayi outstation in the Tanami region near Mount Liebig, where he now resides. Nicknamed ‘Whitlam’ for his imposing figure (after being photographed with the Australian Prime Minister), he began painting in his 40s. This was in the early 1980s, after Daphne Williams had taken over the running of Papunya Tula Artists and began servicing the Mt Liebig region. Later, when Watiyawanu Artists was established at Mt. Liebig in 1990, Charlie began creating works for them.

The Mt. Liebig township lies 325 km to the west of Alice Springs, just 75 km from Papunya.The Warlpiri community there has close connections to family at Haasts Bluff, Papunya, and further west at Kintore and Kiwirrkurra. Other early painters working there include Billy Stockman, Long Tom Tjapanangka, and Mitjili Napurrula, later joined by Lilly Kelly, Ngoia Pollard, Wentja Napaltjarri and Bill Whiskey.

Watiyawanu artists developed a distinctive stylistic approach in their work, often using a detailed lacework of fine dotting, alongside strong iconography of Western Desert Dreaming sites. This pair of distinctive small works, depicting important Men’s Dreaming sites, are typical of the latter approach.

Charlie Marshall is a senior custodian of the Witchetty Grub, Wallaby, and Centipede Dreamings around his birth place. His work has been included in a number of landmark exhibitions, including Aboriginal Art - The Continuing Tradition at the National Gallery of Australia and The Painted Dream, Contemporary Aboriginal Paintings from the Tim and Vivien Johnson Collection.

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LOT #45 ROVER JOOLAMA THOMAS (1926 - 1998) Warmun - Map of Turkey Creek Community, 1983 102 x 121 cm | 106 x 125 cm (frame) natural earth pigments on veneer EST $12,000 - 18,000 PROVENANCE Painted at Warmun, Turkey Creek, WA and acquired directly from the artist in c.1983 Fireworks Gallery, Qld Cat No. FW15657 Private Collection, NSW LITERATURE

Cf. For related works see: Bedford Downs, 1984, in the Holmes à Court Collection, illus. in Carrigan, B, Rover Thomas: I Want to Paint, Holmes à Court Gallery, Perth, 2003, cat. 9.

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Ngamarrin (The Snake near Turkey Creek Country), 1984, and Pilpirrji (Argyle Hill), 1984, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, illus. in Thomas, R, et al, Roads Cross: The Paintings of Rover Thomas, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1994, pp 38 and 18 Untitled, 1984, in the collection of the Berndt Museum illus. in Stanton, J. E, Painting the Country: Contemporary Aboriginal Art from the Kimberley Region, Western Australia, The University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1989, p. 38, pl. 34.

Rover spent a lifetime travelling the stock routes of Australia’s far north.

After working for a period as a jackeroo on the Canning Stock Route, he became a fencing contractor in Wyndham and later worked as a stockman in the Northern Territory and the fringes of the Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts.

This work is likely to have been painted in 1983-1984, early in Rover Thomas’ public painting career. That year he created a number of planar, map-like paintings, referring to sites and pathways of ancestral or historical significance and his own travels during his days as a drover on cattle stations in the region.

LOT #46 TURKEY TOLSON TJUPURRULA (1942 - 2001) Untitled, 1989 122 x 183 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $15,000 - 18,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. TT890292 Hogarth Gallery, NSW Cat No. 682 Patrick Corrigan Collection, NSW Private Collection, Vic Turkey Tolson was born under a tree beside a creek bed about eight kilometres east of Haasts Bluff in the early 1940s. After years working in the Haasts Bluff stock camp droving cattle to Mount Leibig, he underwent initiation into manhood. The family then moved to the

Papunya settlement, where Turkey worked as a construction labourer and in the communal kitchen. In 1961 he married and moved with his young family to an outstation west of Papunya. After his first wife’s untimely death, he remarried at Papunya, where he lived during the early years of the painting movement. He joined Papunya Tula artists as one of its youngest members and painted his earliest artworks for Geoff Bardon in 1972.

This fascinating painting acts as a perfect bridge from his earlier works to the Spear Straightening paintings that were to follow. In the early 1990s, Tolson embraced aesthetic minimalism along with other Pintupi male painters, most notably Ronnie Tjampitjinpa and George Tjungurrayi.

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LOT #47 MAGGIE WATSON NAPANGARDI (1921 - 2004) Hair String and Snake Vine Dreaming, 1998 190 x 70 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $15,000 - 18,000 PROVENANCE Kimberley Art, Vic Cat No. KA 760/98 Private Collection, NSW Maggie Watson began painting at 60 years of age. By the time of her death 19 years later in 2004, she had become the senior female artist at Yuendumu, 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs. She was a leader among a group of women artists who began to challenge the dominance of men’s acrylic painting in the Central Desert region from the mid 1980s. The emergence of these women in Yuendumu and simultaneously in Utopia (amongst Anamtjerre and Alyawarre peoples) challenged the notion that men were the sole guardians of the visual life of these communities.

Foremost amongst the major themes depicted by Maggie Watson, Dorothy Napangardi Robertson, and other female Yuendumu artists is the important Warlpiri women’s Dreaming of the Karntakurlangu.

This epic tale recounts the travel of a large group of ancestral women, the hair string belts they made to carry their babies and possessions, and the magical emergence of digging sticks which, quite literally, thrust themselves out of the ground before the women during the Dreaming, thereby equipping them for their vast travels. As the women danced their way across the desert in joyous exultation, they clutched the digging sticks in their outstretched hands. Dancing in a long line they created important sites and encountered other Dreamings. Hundreds of these women travelled on the long journey first toward the east, then to the north and south, collecting plants and foods with both medicinal and ceremonial uses. They visited many sites, resting at some, going underground at others and later re-emerged, morphing into different, sometimes malevolent, beings.

These powerful ancestral women were involved in initiation ceremonies. They used human hair-string spun and rubbed with special red ochre and fat as part of their magic, just as women do to this day when performing ceremonies that connect them with their Jukurrpa.

The digging sticks symbolically manifest as desert oaks, growing in their homeland near Mina Mina, a central location for much of the story that relates to Warlpiri lands west of Yuendumu.

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LOT #48 ELIZABETH NYUMI NUNGURRAYI (1947 - ) Parwalla, 2007 182 x 297 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $30,000 - 40,000 PROVENANCE Mason Gallery, NT Cat No. AP0787 Private Collection, SA Parwalla is the artist’s father’s country, which lies far to the South of Balgo Hills in the Great Sandy Desert near Kiwirrkura. It is a large, swampy area dominated by sandhills. It fills with water after the wet season and becomes abundant with bush foods. These include bush raisins (kantiliyi), bush tomatoes (Pura), and seeds (Minyli). Men and women collect the bush raisin together. It is high in protein and is thought to have beneficial healing properties, especially for women.

The painting is dominated by the various shades of the surrounding Spinifex grass, which grows strong and seeds after the wet season.

Elizabeth Nyumi is the foremost of the second-generation Balgo artists, on whose success the Warlayirti art centre at Balgo Hills has depended.

More than any other, she carries on and rapturously extends the reputation of the Balgo women artists with her refreshingly distinct and individual depictions of country.

This work is believed to be the largest ever produced by this renowned artist. She completed it whist in Alice Springs visiting relatives on dialysis.

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LOT #49 WALANGKURA NAPANANGKA (C.1946 - ) (Uta Uta Tjangala’s widow) Tjukurla, 2006 121 x 152 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgium linen EST $15,000 - 20,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. WN0601082 Private Collection, NSW Walangkura Napanangka (Uta Uta Tjangala’s widow) was born beside a rockhole near where the Tjukurla community was later established.

As a young woman, she travelled with her large family in the country between Punkilpirri near Docker River and Walukirritji rockhole on the south-western side of Lake MacDonald. When she was in her early teens, her family was met by a welfare patrol – among them Nosepeg Tjupurrula – and were invited to travel with other Pintupi people to

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the Haasts Bluff settlement. She later moved to Papunya to live with her husband Uta Uta Tjangala, who was one of the original shareholders of Papunya Tula Artists. She is the daughter of Inyuwa Nampitjinpa and the sister of Pirrmangka Napanangka, who both painted for Papunya Tula Artists.

This painting depicts the designs associated with the lake site of Tjukurla in Western Australia.The roundels in this work represent the rockholes at this site. The lines depict the surrounding sandhills.

According to the creation myth, a group of ancestral women gathered at this site to perform dances and sing. While at Tjukurla, the women spun hairstring to make nyimparra (hair string skirts), which are worn during ceremonies.The women also gathered large quantities of edible fruit known as pura, or bush tomato, from the small shrub Solanum chippendalei.This fruit is the size of a small apricot. After the seeds have been removed, they can be stored for long periods by halving the fruit and skewering them onto a stick. Upon completion of the ceremonies, the women continued their travels north, toward the rockhole site of Illpilli and then on to a site near Nyirrpi.

LOT #50 TJAWINA PORTER NAMPITJINPA (1950 - ) Pukurlpatulatja Palyara Pirrtja, 2013 91 x 76 cm | 94 x 79 cm (frame) synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $1,800 - 2,500 PROVENANCE Warakurna Artists, NT Cat No. TPN201347 Private Collection, Vic Tjawina Porter Nampitjinpa and her sisters Nyurapaya and Esther Giles were born at Yumara, north of Docker River, Western Australia.

After the death of their younger brother, the family moved to the newly established government settlement of Papunya in the early 1970s. The sisters were at the centre of the art movement beginning to emerge.

Nyurapayia Nampitjinpa was a promient and powerful presence in the 1994 painting camp, attended by Haasts Bluff and Kintore women, which initiated painting amongst women of the region. Today, all three sisters are senior Western Desert artists.

LOT #51 SUSIE BOOTJA BOOTJA (C.1932 - 2003 ) & SAM TJAMPITJIN ( 1930 - 2004) Untitled, 1998 36 x 46 cm each | 38 x 48 cm (framed each) synthetic polymer paint on canvas boards EST $2,000 - 4,000 PROVENANCE Warlayirti Artists, WA Cat No. 173/98 and 150/98 Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity for both works Both Suzie Bootja Bootja and SamTjampitjin have passed away.They were amongst the founders of the painting movement of the Kukatja people, north of Lake McKay in the farWestern Desert,south of the East Kimberley.

Susie Bootja Bootja was a vibrant and colourful personality, respected for her knowledge of the law and ceremony of Kurtal,a fresh water spring in the northern reaches of the Canning Stock Route where she spent her youth.

Sam’s painting depicts many parallel sand dunes (tali), surrounding a central Warran (claypan), where water collects after rains. This is a significant meeting place for which he was a senior custodian.

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LOT #52 PATRICK OLOODOODI TJUNGURRAYI (C.1935 - 2017) Puntujtalpa, 2005 152 x 122 | 154 x 124 cm (framed) synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $10,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. PT0508196 Gabrielle Pizzi Gallery, Vic Private Collection, Tas Patrick Tjungurrayi was born near Jupiter Well and walked into the Old Balgo Mission that was established in 1943. After the community moved to its current location in 1962, he worked constructing the church and other buildings. He painted for Warlayirti artists until the early 1990s, when he moved once more to settle in Kintore. He subsequently painted for Papunya Tula Artists until his death in 2017.

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This work depicts a site in the Western Desert associated with the mythological Tingari beings who travelled over vast stretches of the country, performing rituals and creating and shaping particular sites.The Tingari Men were usually followed by Tingari Women and accompanied by novices. Their travels and adventures are enshrined in a number of song cycles. These mythologies form part of the teachings of postinitiatory youths, as well as providing explanations for contemporary customs.

Stories associated with the Tingari are of a secret sacred nature and only related in full to initiated men.

LOT #53 CHARLIE TJAPANGATI (C.1949 - ) Tingari at Manakarra, north of Jupiter Well, 2005 120 x 107 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. CT0509038 Private Collection, Vic Charlie Tjapangati began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1977, after having observed the older men painting while living in West Camp, Papunya.

This painting depicts designs associated with the swamp site of Manakarra, north of Jupiter Well. In mythological times, a large group of Tingari Men visited this site before travelling east, passing through

Walipalinpa and then to Kiwikurra. Since events associated with the Tingari Cycle are of a secret nature, no further detail was given.

In 2000, Charlie Tjapangati, along with a group of four men from Kiwirrkurra, travelled to Sydney to make a ground painting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales for the opening of Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius. He has appeared in many group exhibitions and two solo exhibitions.

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LOT #54 MICK NAMARARI TJAPALTJARRI (1926 - 1998) Pinterarnga, 1980 61 x 45 cm (painting size) | 63 x 47 cm (frame) powder pigment on artboard EST $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. MN800584 Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 28/06/1999, Lot No. 186 Private Collection, NSW During a career that spanned almost three decades, Mick Namarari became a towering presence, whose variety of subjects and diversity of stylistic approaches kept him at the forefront of Western Desert painting. Driven to paint regardless of the materials at hand, his early works

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were closely tied to narrative. Symbolic designs were painted, often on a rich, earthy background with a sharpness of line that imbued them with a remarkable clarity.

This early board, rendered in a style reminiscent of Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri in its delicate tracery, and Johnny Warrangkula in its descriptive stippled background, depicts a Dreaming site associated with the travels of Tingari ancestors.

Mick Namarari was credited as having played the decisive role in propelling Papunya Tula art away from the edifice of Tingari cartography and towards the ethereal minimalism typical of 1990s Pintupi men’s art.

Mick Namarari was the first recipient of Aboriginal Australia’s highest cultural accolade, the Australia Council’s Red Ochre Award, presented to him in 1994, four years prior to his death.

LOT #55 MICK NAMARARI TJAPALTJARRI (1926 - 1998) Tingari, 1988 121 x 180 cm | 140 x 200 cm (frame) synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. MN880527 Private Collection, USA Private Collection, NSW Mick Namarari was born in sandhill country at Marnpi Rockhole south-west of the Mount Rennie Bore and was initiated in the Areyonga region. He worked in the cattle industry until he settled at Papunya. He was 45 years of age when, in 1971, he began painting under the guidance of Geoffrey Bardon as one of the founding members of Papunya Tula Artists.

Namarari was awarded the National Aboriginal Art Award in 1991 and, in 1994, was a recipient of the Australia Council’s prestigious Red Ochre Award.

This typical work of the mid 1980s is a gracefully controlled rendition of the classic Tingari design of linked concentric circles. It is symbolic in its representation of the journeys of ancestral men and women whose acts are the preserve of a select few highly initiated elders. The composition is one of the keystones of Western Desert iconography of the period.

In time, Mick Namarari’s went on to create late career works which heralded the ethereal minimalism of the late 1980s and 1990s.

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LOT #56 GEORGE (HAIRBRUSH) TJUNGARRAYI (1947 - ) Mamulttjulkulnga Claypan, 2003 121 x 152 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgium linen EST $15,000 - 20,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. GT0306061 Private Collection, NSW George Tjungurrayi’s initial contact with the world outside his remote clan country occurred as a seventeen-year-old boy. He left the Gibson Desert on foot to walk the long road east until intercepted by a truck just south of Mount Doreen. He settled in West Camp, Papunya, where he began painting around 1976, after encouragement from Nosepeg Tjupurrula.

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His preoccupation from the outset had been the ceremonial activities and men’s stories associated with the travels of the Tingari ancestors.

These stories related to his most significant sites, including his birthplace, Wala Wala.

It was not until well in to the mid 1980s that he expanded his palette and experimented stylistically. His works had always suggested a sacred geometry related to the Tingari, and, by 1994, he had forsaken figurative imagery altogether in favour of works entirely composed of duo-tone linear roundels and shapes, arranged in tight formal geometric patterns that pulsed with a subtle rhythm. His paintings increasingly distanced themselves stylistically from their ceremonial origins and the application of distinct dotted brush strokes.

This painting depicts the designs relating to the claypan and soakwater site of Mamulttjulkulnga on the western side of Lake McKay. After heavy rains, the claypan becomes a freshwater lake. In mythological times, two Tingari Men of the Tjangala and Tjapaltjarri kinship groups camped at this site.

LOT #57 WARLIMPIRRNGA TJAPALTJARRI (C.1958 - ) Tingari site west of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), 2010 122 x 210 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $14,000 - 19,000 PROVENANCE Aboriginal Australia Art and Culture, NT Cat No. AS05 Private Collection, NT Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Paul Ah Chee Ngala Aboriginal Australia Art and Culture and a series of photos of the artist painting the artwork LITERATURE

Cf. For a comparable work see Perkins, H. and H. Fink (eds), Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales in association with Papunya Tula Artists, 2000, illus. p. 102

Prior to 1984, Warlimpirrnga had been living west of Lake Mackay with his small family group and had had no contact with European Australians. His Pintupi relatives had almost all been brought out of the Gibson Desert decades earlier by the infamous ‘Pintupi Patrols’, forcing them to settle in Haasts and Papunya. He commenced painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1987 and he had his first solo exhibition at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne the following year.

This dynamic work was created for the Arrernte traditional owner and singer/songwriter Paul Ah Chee Ngala when he was a director of the Alice Springs Desert Park. Like many other Western Desert paintings, the work is a topographical aerial view of ancestral lands. The Tingari beings arrived at this site west of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) from the west, travelling beneath the earth’s surface to create the ridges and windswept sandhills that unfold pulsating and radiating across the canvas. Waves of sand ridges and dunes are depicted by constructing a matrix of parallel meandering and zigzagging lines. These are the same as those incised into traditional ceremonial objects, including hair pins, boomerangs, and shields made by senior artisans amongst desert peoples.

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“ those Walpiri ladies, they’re

mad about dancing, they go round and round and round dancing, they’re always dancing.

”

- Kathleen Petyarre

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LOT #58 DOROTHY NAPANGARDI (C.1956 - 2013) Salt on Mina Mina, 2008 122 x 198 cm synthetic polymer on Belgian linen EST $30,000 - 40,000 PROVENANCE Gallery Gondwana, Alice Springs, NT Cat No. 10002DN Private Collection, NSW Dorothy began creating works tracing the grid-like patterns of the salt encrustations on the Mina Mina clay pans in 1997, marking a significant artistic shift in her work. Over the following three-year period, her paintings became less and less contrived and increasingly spare, all detail pared back to the barest essentials. These new works compelled the spectators eye to dance across the painted surface, just as the Karntakulangu ancestral women danced in their hundreds across the country during the region’s creation.

As these works developed, Dorothy’s extraordinary spatial ability enabled her to create mimetic grids and lines of white dots (on a black ground) or black dots (on a white ground, such as in this lovely work), tracing the travels of her female ancestors as they danced their way, in joyous exultation, through the saltpans, Spinifex, and sand hills, clutching their digging sticks in outstretched hands.

Kathleen Petyarre has been quoted as saying ‘those Walpiri ladies, they’re mad about dancing, they go round and round and round dancing, they’re always dancing’. Little wonder that the surfaces of Dorothy’s canvases become dense rhythms of grids, as she mapped the paths of these dancing women.

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LOT #59 EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE (1910 - 1996) Arlatyite (Wild Yam) Dreaming , 1996 85 x 122 cm natural earth pigments on canvas EST $18,000 - 24,000 PROVENANCE Utopia Art (Central Land Council), NT Cat No. EKK9852 Private Collection, NSW LITERATURE Cf. for other examples of Emily’s ochre paintings executed at the same time, see ‘Emily Kame Kngwarreye: The First Ochres’, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, Vic, March 1996

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During 1996, the last year of Emily’s life, Allan Glaetzer ran a nascent art centre in the Utopia community. Men and women, including Emily Kame and Mick Namarari, created works there.

For many of them, the first experience of serious painting had been the making of boldly fluid marks on the greased-black skin of their extended family for ceremony. As a direct result of Glaetzer’s efforts to influence Central and Eastern Desert painters back to using natural earth pigments as a medium, Emily produced a body of work in ochres depicting Pencil Yams (Arlatyte) and their flowers. An exhibition of these was held at Lauraine Diggins Fine Art in Melbourne the same year.

This painting was among Emily’s first attempts at using natural ochres to depict her Arlatye Dreaming. Emily painted this work from an aerial perspective, as if tracing the tracks of the women, covered in ochre and representing their totem, dancing through the dust and sand across a ceremonial ground in a line illuminated by firelight.

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LOT #60 KATHLEEN PETYARRE (1940 - 2018) Thorny Devil Lizard Dreaming, 2010 122 x 182 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $12,000 - 18,000 PROVENANCE Gallerie Australis, SA Cat No. GAKP1010620 Private Collection, SA Accompanied by a Gallery Australis certificate EXHIBITED Exposition Arts D’Australie a la Barclays Banque Privee, Ave George V, Paris Kathleen Petyarre, Genius of Place, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 2001

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The most common theme in Kathleen Petyarre’s work refers to Arnkerrth, the Mountain Devil or Thorny Devil Lizard, and the Dreamings associated with this small spiky lizard believed to have created the artist’s country. As the Lizard criss-crossed the vast terrain, changing colour according to its environment, it moved the sand, grain by grain throughout the history of time, creating the hills and valleys, sandhills and waterholes that are seen there today.

Kathleen was an exceptionally gifted and highly disciplined artist. She spent many hours preparing her canvas, carefully applying layer upon layer of different coloured paint that was absorbed into the linen, thereby imparting an extremely refined appearance to the finished painting. Barely visible dots sink into the work, while others are overpainted across the surface, thereby heightening the illusion of threedimensionality.

Kathleen was a great innovator; a singularly talented artist who won the prestigious National Aboriginal and TSI Art Award and was recognised with the rare honour of a solo retrospective exhibition at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art - in which this painting featured.

LOT #61 ELIZABETH NYUMI NUNGURRAYI (1947 - ) Parwalla, 2007 81 x 80 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Warlayirti Artists, WA Cat No. 373/07 Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, NSW Private Collection, NSW Elizabeth Nyumi’s early years were spent some three hundred kilometres south of Balgo, near Jupiter Well, where she lived a nomadic life until she walked up the Canning Stock Route and into the old Balgo Mission in her late teens. She began painting in acrylics for the Warlayirti Art Centre in 1988.

This painting depicts the country known as Parwalla, which is Nyumi’s father’s country far to the south of Balgo in the Great Sandy Desert, west of Kiwirrkurra. Parwalla is a large swampy area that fills with water after the wet season rain and consequently produces an abundance of bush foods. The majority of Nyumi’s paintings show the different bush foods, including kantjilyi (bush raisin), pura (bush tomato), and minyili (seed). The whitish colours represent the spinifex that grows strong and seeds after the wet season rains. These seeds are white in colour and grow so thickly they obscure the ground and other plants below.

In this work, Nyumi’s melting textures create an exquisite play with light. A blanket of cream dots rest almost weightlessly over subtly submerged layers. Through this ‘powdered blanket’ emerge various organic and iconographic forms in an almost haphazard, yet aesthetically harmonious, arrangement.

Elizabeth Nyumi is the foremost of the second-generation Balgo artists, on whose success the Warlayirti art centre at Balgo Hills has depended. More than any other artist, she has extended the reputation of the Balgo women artists with her refreshingly distinct and individual depictions of country.

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LOT #62 GLORIA PETYARRE (1942 - ) Arnkerrthe - Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming, 1993 83 x 75 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas EST $1,500 - 2,500 PROVENANCE Rodney Gooch, NT Utopia Art Sydney, NSW Cat No. 72-793 Sotheby’s Australia Private Collection, NSW Raised in a remote part of the Eastern Desert and initiated into Anmatyerre law and traditions, Gloria Petyarre participated in the first art programs organised at Utopia in 1977, when she was 39 years of age.

Those early batik-making workshops marked the emergence of Aboriginal

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women artists in the region. When art advisor Rodney Gooch introduced the women to acrylic paints and canvas in the early 1980s, a range of new possibilities opened up that were distinctly female and without precedent in the Aboriginal art movement.

In this, one of Gloria’s earliest paintings, she has lifted the body-painting design for the Mountain Devil Lizard ceremony off the body and applied it to the canvas. In this ceremony, the ancestral being is honoured, good rains and harvests are acknowledged, and the rules of relatedness between people and country are carefully retraced and strengthened.

Over time, Gloria began to paint more freely, experimenting with bands of parallel lines, curvilinear patterns, colour schemes, and textural areas of dots and dashes.

Working alongside Emily Kame Kngwarreye and inspired by the older woman’s groundbreaking success and brave, expressive abstraction, Gloria went on to develop the confident and distinctive style for which she is now better known.

LOT #63 KAY LINDJAWANGA (1945 - ) Mardayin Design, 2004 160 x 36 cm (irregular) natural earth pigments on bark EST $3,500 - 4,500 PROVENANCE Maningrida Ats and Culture, NT Cat No. 2229-04 Aboriginal and Pacific Art, NSW Private Collection, NSW Kay Lindjuwanga is a Kuninjku artist and daughter of renowned painter Peter Marralwanga. She was taught to paint by her husband and acclaimed artist, John Mawurndjul. Lindjuwanga has often assisted Mawurndjul with his painting.In the early 1990s,she was among the first Kuninjku women to paint on bark. As well as bark paintings, her repertoire includes lorrkon (hollow logs), mimih carvings, and etchings. She had her first solo show in 2004 at Aboriginal & Pacific Arts in Sydney and her work was included in the landmark exhibition Crossing Country at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2004, she won theTelstra Bark Painting Award.

This work concerns the Mardayin ceremony and its content is of a secret and sacred nature.

LOT #64 JOHN MAWURNDJUL (1952 - ) Namarrkon (The Lightning Spirit), 1993 156 x 65 cm natural earth pigments and synthetic binder on Eucalyptus bark EST $18,000 - 22,000 PROVENANCE Maningrida Arts and Culture, NT Cat No. JM1583 Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Vic (label attached verso) Private Collection, Vic Certificate of authenticity from Maningrida Arts and Culture attached verso LITERATURE John Mawurndjul: New Work, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 20 November - 22 December 2007, cat.18 The primary subjects of John Mawurndjul’s early works were local totemic creatures, such as fish, bandicoots, and possum, as well as spirit beings including Ngalyod (the Rainbow Serpent) and Namarrkon (the Lightning Spirit. His work at this time reflected his place as an heir to the long painting tradition of Kuninjku artists, who had created magnificent bark paintings over the previous decade.

Though he incorporated rarrk designs into his art, this ‘design element’ remained secondary to the figurative elements, rarely leaving the interior of the figure which was set against a plain background.

This was thought, at the time, to be the quintessential Central and Western Arnhem Land painting style.

As time progressed, however, Mawurndjul increasingly allowed the rarrk designs to dominate, filling both the interior and surrounding space of his figures. By the mid 1990s, he had abandoned figurative iconography all but completely. This Lightning Spirit in its female manifestation is a very rare exception.

Namarrkon lives above the clouds and controls the electrical storms, also associated with the monsoon weather in the Top End of the Northern Territory.

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LOT #65 TURKEY TOLSON TJUPURRULA (1942 - 2001) Spear Straightening at Ilyingaungau, 1999 152 x 62 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Aboriginal Desert Art Gallery, NT Private Collection, SA Accompanied by a photo of the artist painting this artwork Turkey Tolson joined Papunya Tula artists as one of its youngest members, painting his earliest artworks for Geoff Bardon in 1972. He was one of the most innovative and figurative artists of the Papunya Tula movement’s early days.

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Throughout the 1980s, Tolson’s unassuming leadership style and commitment to the community, combined with his individual approach, became the hallmarks of an enduring career. He introduced his Spear Straightening imagery around 1990 and retuned to it again and again thereafter. In time, it became his leitmotif.

In this example, the horizontal bands of dots evoke the shimmering heat and vast distances of the artist’s desert country. In the Dreaming, the Mitukatjirri Men travelled from a claypan at Tjulula to Llyingaungau, a rocky outcrop far to the west of Alice Springs, where they made camp. A group of men entered the country from Tjikari, to the north. A fight ensued, after which the Mitukatjarri Men travelled to the nearby cave where they made their ceremonies. The parallel bands of dots represent spears, which the men straightened by warming the wood over a fire, bending it into shape as they waited for the men from Tjikari to arrive.

LOT #66 EUBENA NAMPITJIN (1924 - 2013) Midjul, 2008 120 x 61 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $7,000 - 9,000 PROVENANCE Warlayirti Artists, WA Cat No. 1424/08 Private Collection, WA Eubena Nampitjin began painting in 1988 alongside her second husband Wimmitji Tjapangarti. Their early works portrayed Dreaming sites, country, and ancestral travels in the most intimate cartographic detail and are to this day the very finest paintings that have ever emanated from the Balgo Hills community.

While Balgo’s physical isolation conferred the space to evolve a distinct and unique artistic style, Eubena’s own separation from her homeland manifested as an art of absence, an act of homage which crystallised the poignancy of her country. The sense of raw energy and spontaneity in her work, with her trademark use of vibrant colour, bold patterning, and rough and ready handling, creates an ‘extraordinary sense of presence,’ that overrides any connotations of the work as an object of anthropological significance and invites the viewer ‘to appreciate her pictures for their immediate visual impact as works of contemporary art’ Eubena has painted some of her country south west of Balgo along the middle streches of the Canning Stock Route.The majority of the painting shows the tali (sandhills) that dominate this country. The central circle is tjurrnu (sockwater) named Midjul. This is the country where Kinyu the spirit dog lives. Eubena would often cover Midjul with leaves, and leave gifts of goanna to appease Kinyu when she camped at this site.

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LOT #67 ABIE KEMARRE LOY (1972 - ) Body Painting, 2005 167 x 211 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Gallerie Australis SA Cat No. GAAL 05051377 Private Collection, NSW EXHIBITED Commissioned by Gallerie Australis - inscribed verso with artist signature and catalogue raisonne number L’Art Aborigine a Art Elysées 2012, Champs Elysées, Paris France Art Paris Art Fair 2013, Grand Palais, Paris France Parlours des Mondes 2015, Saint Germain, Paris France

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Abie Loy Kemarre was the granddaughter of the highly renowned Eastern Anmatjerre painter and National Aboriginal and TSI Award Winner, Kathleen Petyarre.

The linear designs in Abie’s painting represent awelye (women’s ceremony and body paint designs) for the Ahakeye (Bush Plum). These designs are painted onto the chest, breasts, arms, and thighs of women for ceremony. Powders ground from red and yellow ochre, charcoal and ash are used as body paint, applied with a flat stick with soft padding.

They call this stick ‘typale’. The women sing the songs associated with their awelye as each women takes her turn to be ‘painted-up’.

Women perform awelye ceremonies to demonstrate respect for their country and to ensure the well-being and health of their community during the year ahead.

LOT #68 HELEN MCCARTHY TYALMUTY (1972 - ) Marrawuk Burnoff, 2012 120 x 180 cm | 123 x 183 cm (frame) synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $10,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Palya Proper Fine Art, NT Private Collection, NSW After spending most of her childhood at Daly River, Helen McCarthy went to school in the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland.

She became an artist while studying to become a teacher at Deakin University, from where she graduated in 1994. During the following decade, she successfully juggled her job as a teacher in remote communities and her painting practice until, in 2003, she decided to devote herself to painting full-time.

She had her first solo exhibition in Sydney in 2006 and further solo and group exhibitions quickly followed. In 2007, Helen won the People’s Choice Award at the 24th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards and, in 2011, she was commissioned to paint the artwork used as the stage backdrop for the Oprah Winfrey show that was filmed in Australia.

Her passion to learn as much as possible about culture and country from her elders, along with her natural ability as a painter, has seen her develop an array of painting styles. She can employ intricate dotting and delicate brushwork techniques, abstract imagery, bold colour use, and intuitive inter-plays with space and form. Her art can be multi-layered, complex and colourful, or it can be restrained, solemn and occasionally ominous.

Helen combines her connection to country and culture with her Western education to convey her ideas and experiences in her very accomplished and unique manner.

Amongst numerous other awards, Helen was awarded the Margaret Olley Art Award (Mosman Art Prize) and was the highly commended in the 2018 Paddington Art Prize.

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LOT #69 JIMMY MAWUKURA (MULGRA) NERRIMAH (C. 1929 - 2014) Jukurautu, Pilpari, Kartupu and Tarni Waterholes, 2005 178 x 150 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas EST $10,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Mangkaja Arts Resources, WA Cat No. pc186/05 Private Collection, NSW Jimmy Nerrimah was born was born at a swamp called Miyitinynanguwu, 500 km south east of Derby. He went through the law at Lumpu Lumpu and lived a nomadic existence in the desert until his 60s. As a fully initiated Walmajarri man, he knew all of the waterholes and soakages throughout his country.

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He lived in the desert, moving around totally reliant on these sources of water. He finally left the bush in his 60s and worked for a time at Nerrimah Station, where he got his ‘white fella’ name.

In this work, he depicts a series of waterholes (jillas) on his country, Wayampajarti, in the north-western area of the Great Sandy Desert.

They are named Jukurautu, Pilpari, Kartupu and Tarni waterholes.

LOT #70 FREDDIE TIMMS (1946 - 2017) Bow River, 1999 135 x 122 cm natural earth pigments on Belgian linen EST $12,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Jirrawun Aboriginal Art Corporation, WA Cat No. FT599.77 Watters Gallery, NSW Private Collection, Vic Freddie Timms was born at Police Hole, Gnarmaliny country on Bedford Downs in the East Kimberley. He worked as a contract musterer, first at Bow River where he grew up and later at the surrounding pastoral leases, including Durham River, Lissadell, Mabel Downs, Old Argyle, and Texas Downs. He was in his forties when he began painting his country under the watchful eye of elders Hector Jandanay, Henry Wambini, George Mung Mung, Paddy Jaminji, Rover Thomas, and Jack Britten.

In this image, he depicts the Bow River Cattle station, with the old stock route from Moola Bulla to Wyndham passing through it. During his droving days, he regularly participated in the two-week cattle drives along this route. There were some ten cattle camps along the way at Bow River, and Damper Creek was but one of them. Also known as Moonlight Valley, it was the last camp before Durham Station, locally known as Doon Doon.The wild ‘scrub’ cattle, mustered in the high ‘top’ country, were held in yards prior to the two-week walk into the busy processing facility and port of Wyndham.

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LOT #71 QUEENIE MCKENZIE NAKARA (1930 - 1998) Domboyn - Owls, 1996 120 x 90 cm natural earth pigment on canvas EST $10,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Warmun Traditional Artists, WA Cat No. QM0035 Flinders Lane Gallery, Vic Private Collection, Vic The Mook Mook Owls, mother and baby, are found in a cave at the Blue Tongue Lizard Dreaming site, adjacent to Pompei Pillar near the turnoff to the Argyle Diamond Mine. The cave site is called Tunnel Creek. Owls are associated with birth and death amongst Gija people.

In the Narrangunny (Dreaming story), an Aboriginal woman was sitting at a waterhole fishing for bream. After catching a few fish, she heard a fearsome noise coming from above. Thinking it was the ‘devil-devil’, she threw everything in the air and ran to her camp screaming. A few of the bravest men were dispatched to investigate the frightening sound only to find, while checking a small cave above the fishing hole, owls, ‘damboyn’ sitting in the darkness making their ‘mook-mook’ call – the

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LOT #72 ROVER JOOLAMA THOMAS (1926 - 1998) The Eaglehawk & The Crow, 1996 60 x 90 cm | 64 x 94 cm (frame) natural earth pigments on Belgian linen EST $20,000 - 25,000 PROVENANCE Narrangunny Art Traders, WA Cat No. N-0282-RT Private Collection, WA

the drover Wally Dowling to Bililuna at the top of the Canning Stock Route, and late to Bow River and Texas Downs, near Warmun, where he honed his droving and fencing skills.

signed ‘Rover’ verso

Having been accepted by the Kija people as one of their own, Rover underwent tribal initiation and was given the skin name Joolama in the East Kimberley region, far to the north of his own country. In the late 1970s Rover became the founder of the East Kimberley painting movement.

Rover Thomas was born at Koonawaratji, near Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route in the Western Desert region of Western Australia. As a young boy, he lived ‘the old way’ in the bush, hunting and gathering desert food with his family. At 11 years of age, Rover was taken by

The story that accompanies this work reads: Eaglehawk, (koondooroo), is watching Crow (wonjanali), to ensure that he doesn’t get to the heart of dead Kangaroo, (malu malu,) as that is eaglehawk’s favourite food (mungari).

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LOT #73 JACK MENGENEN DALE (1922 - 2013) Donkey Wagons Memories, 2001 92 x 135 cm natural earth pigments on canvas EST $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Created in Derby for Neil McCleod Fine Art, Cat No. NM2054 Vivien Anderson Gallery, Vic Private Collection, Vic As one of the last of the dwindling generation of old men who possess complete knowledge of the rituals, law, and culture of his people, Jack Dale was a vital link to the past. His most compelling and mysterious works focus on the Wandjina and other important spirit beings that created the land and instituted the laws that govern human behaviour.

Jack was equally renowned for paintings, such as this work, that reveal aspects of the history of the Kimberley region and the often brutal interaction between black and white culture.

When the Aboriginal people had been driven from their clan estates by the police and pastoralists, most of them were forced to work for a pittance or rations. They dug rough wagon tracks to enable pastoralists to establish stations further and further out into their country from Derby. In this work, a donkey wagon is travelling through the King Leopold Ranges on the way to Derby.The route was much longer than it is today, as they had no heavy machinery to cut through hills and had to skirt around them instead. Those who did not want to work hid in pockets of land protected by the ranges and watched from their vantage point as the wagons passed by on the makeshift roads below.

Jack Dale’s life was precariously balanced at the crossroads of change.

Sometimes referred to as the ‘Grand Old Man of the Kimberley’, Jack Dale was highly respected as a tribal elder and custodian of ceremonial Law, and for his skill as a bushman. He came to painting late in life after many hard-working years as a stockman and was revered for his extensive knowledge of Kimberley law and history, his physical strength, and determined attitude.

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LOT #74 DICK NGULEINGULEI (1920 - 1988) Kumuken - Freshwater Crocodile, 1981 133 x 61 cm (irregular) natural earth pigments on bark EST $5,000 - 9,000 PROVENANCE Maningrida Arts and Crafts, NT Cat No. K514/K513/ORR Private Collection, NSW Dick Nguleingulei Murrumurru lived most of his life on the Liverpool River plateau in West Arnhem Land, where he was born around 1920. He dedicated himself to painting from 1965 until the end of his life.

Murrumurru was a versatile, inventive, and eclectic bark painter.

His subject matter focused on totemic animals such as kumoken (freshwater crocodile) and ngarrbek (echidna), which were painted with a hunter’s attuned sense of proportion, anatomy, and personality.

He also painted stories and spirits from the stone country, such as the Wardbukarra-wardbukarra from nearby Manmoyi and the Mimih spirits that inhabit the escarpment.

His works were included in many major exhibitions, including Keepers of the Secrets at the AGWA in 1990, Dreamings at the Asia Society in New York in 1988, Art of the First Australians in Kobe, Japan in 1986, Kunwinjku Bim at the NGV in 1984, and The Art of Aboriginal Australia, which toured North America in 1974-76.

Kumuken, a totem of the Dhuwa moiety, was the artist’s mother’s Dreaming. Kumuken the crocodile was the creator of the Liverpool area of Maningrida. After emerging from the earth, Kumuken went to the sea and made the shape of the river with its tail.

LOT #75 MITHINARI GURUWIWI (1929 - 1976) Djikay, the Lotus bird, 1970 136 x 50 cm natural earth pigments on bark EST $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Collected in the Yirrkala region, North East Arnhem Land, NT Private Collection, NSW LITERATURE Cf. for detailed discussions of Mithinari’s paintings depicting the Djan’kawu in Galpu country, see Groger-Wurm, 1973, p. 22-23 For further discussion relating to a larger painting with a more complete depiction of the mythology, see Neale M, Yiribana, 1994, p. 96-97 90

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Galpu clan elder and ceremonial leader Mithinari was born at Ngaypinyu, near Blue Mud Bay. He learned to paint as a young man with a group of Dhuwa-moiety artists at Beach Camp in Yirrkala.They were taught by the master bark painters Mawalan Marika and Wandjuk Marika.

Mithinari’s work was distinguished by skilful use of surface patterning and concentration on the Wawilag religious mythology, which starts when a pair of sisters begin their journey in the region of Mithinari’s country.

The birds depicted in this work are djikay, lotus birds, and the background designs represent the Galpu clan.

Mithinari was one of the painters of the famous Yirrkala Church panels, alongside other renowned artists including Mathaman Marika and Mawalan Marika. The panels are now housed in the Buku-Larrnggay Museum. His work was collected by all major institutions and a number of seminal private collectors during the 1960s and 1970s.

LOT #76 NARRITJIN MAYMURU (1922 - 1982) Possums Climbing a Sacred Cashew Tree at Djarrakpi, 1967 121 x 43 cm natural earth pigments on bark EST $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Collected in the Yirrkala region, North East Arnhem Land, NT Private Collection, NSW Narritjin, the keeper of the important possum tree story, was a great ceremonial leader in North East Arnhem Land.

Guwark, the sacred bird of the Dreamtime, lives at the top of a tree situated on the high cliffs above Blue Mud Bay. Only the very old initiated men can look upon this sacred tree, and then only at dawn, when the grey mists swirl about the tree and give an elusive glimpse of its branches.

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High on the top of the tree sits Guwark, waiting for cicadas and possums to scamper up the tree with messages from the people living on earth.

He flies off across the ocean to the island of the spirits, Baralku, and recounts the human problems to the spirit heroes. After consultation amongst themselves, they appoint Barama, one of the chief spirits, to relay the answer to the big black bird, which then flies back across the ocean. As he approaches the tree, he screeches out ‘guwark guwark’.

The possums and cicadas scamper up the tree to hear his message and take it back to the people anxiously waiting below.

Once Guwark was a man who went out fishing with a companion in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Huge seas overturned their canoe and Guwark gave the only paddle to his companion, who drifted onto shore with it. Guwark drowned and went up into the Milky Way. Each day he flies down to the sacred tree to wait for his messages, returning to the heavens each night.

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LOT #77 attrib. DEAF TOMMY MUNGATOPI (1923 - 1985) Moonlight on Water, 1970 110 x 63 cm natural earth pigments on Eucalyptus bark EST $8,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Painted at Milikapiti, Melville Island c.1960 Lawsons, Sydney 1987 Milton and Alma Roxanas Collection Bonhams 11 May 2014 Sydney Lot 156 Private Collection, NSW LITERATURE Cf. For a stylistically similar work see Jennifer Isaacs, Tiwi: Art/ History/Culture, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne University Publishing Limited. 2012, p.17 (illus.)

Holmes, Sandra le Brun, The Goddess and the Moon Man: The Sacred Art of the Tiwi Aborigines, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1995, pp.91-99

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Deaf Tommy Mungatopi was recognised among the Tiwi as an exceptional ar tist, regularly commissioned to make tutini or Pukumani funeral poles for ceremonies. He belonged to one of the great Tiwi art dynasties. He was the brother of two other influential Tiwi artists, Alie Miller Mungatopi (c.1910-1968) and Laurie One Eye Nelson Mungatopi (1915-1968).

In the late 1970s, Deaf Tommy made five tutini for the National Gallery of Australia, forming part of a group that were installed in the Sculpture Garden for its opening to the public in 1982.

Deaf Tommy had a distinctive painting style that incorporated alternating bands of dotting, applied by using a wooden comb (pwoja), and sequences of dashes, or, as in sections of this painting, linked diamonds.

In his paintings, Mungatopi is able to evoke the physical atmosphere of a landscape while expressing its ancestral dimension through the repetition and variations of abstracted designs and patterns.

This image relates to the story of Purukuparli, the creation ancestor of the Tiwi, who carried the dead body of his infant son Jinani into the waters off the eastern coast of Melville Island. He drowned, thus bringing death to the previously immortal Tiwi. The site abounds with coral reefs where women collect shellfish at low tide.

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LOT #78 ARTIST ONCE KNOWN Purukapali and Bima, 1990 175 x 21 cm (taller) | 153 x 16 cm (shorter) natural earth pigments on ironwood EST $2,500 - 4,500 PROVENANCE Tiwi Design, Bathurst Island, NT Private Collection, Vic The Tiwi people live on Bathurst and Melville Islands, north of Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia. Tiwi culture is quite different to that of mainland tribes. Here, the main ceremonies are associated with fertility, increase and abundance (Kurlama – Yam ceremonies), and funeral rites (Pukumani ceremonies), during which the soul of the deceased makes its spirit journey back to live amongst the ancestors.

This set of Pukumani poles depict Purukapali, the ancestor of all Tiwi people, and his wife Bima.

Purukapali and Tarpara were brothers.Tapara made love to Purukapali’s wife, Bima, who left her son Jinani out under the hot sun. When Jinani passed away, death came to the Tiwi Islands for the first time.The two brothers fought and Tapara fled into the sky, where he became the moon.

Pukumani poles are situated outside the ceremonial circle during funerary rites. In the old days, the Tiwi carved these totem-like poles out of bloodwood trees by slowly burning sections, which were then scraped away using shell knives. As this wood is extremely hard, it was not until metal axes were introduced that Tiwi carving became more refined. The poles are completed with elaborate paintings, representing aspects of the deceased person’s creation story.

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LOT #79 KITTY KANTILLA (C.1928 - 2003) Jilamara - Ceremonial Design, 1994 45.5 x 35 cm | 47.5 x 37 cm (frame) natural earth pigment on canvas EST $2,500 - 3,500 PROVENANCE Jilamara Arts and Crafts, Milikapiti, NT Cat No. SC94KK045 Cooee Art Gallery, NSW Private Collection, NSW Kitty Kantilla’s art, and indeed all Tiwi art, is informed by the ornate body painting of the Pukumani ceremony. What makes the art of Kitty Kantilla and those of her generation so inherently important is the fact that the meaning of these designs has been largely lost since the missionary era. She was amongst the very last who inherited them intact.

A seemingly abstract iconography lies at the heart of Kitty Kantilla’s art. Far from being non-representational, however, the different combinations of dots, lines, and blocks of colour called jilamara (design), when combined, evoke elements of ritual and reveal the essence of Kantilla’s cultural identity. Like other Tiwi artists, Kantilla gained her artistic knowledge in ceremonial contexts, before learning to express her individuality by carving and painting objects related to the Pukumani (mourning) ceremony.

Her artworks, regardless of medium, were always tied to the fundamental Tiwi creation story. Bima, the wife of Purukapali, makes love to her brother-in-law while her son Jinani, left lying under a tree in the sun, dies of exposure. Purukapali becomes enraged and, after his wife is transformed into a night curlew, begins an elaborate mourning ceremony for his son.This was the first Pukumani (mortuary) ceremony, telling how death first came to the Tiwi Islands.

LOT #80 PADDY WAINBURRANGA FORDHAM (1932 - 2006) Mimih Spirit, 1985 68 x 45 cm (irregular) | 77 x 54 cm (frame) natural earth pigments on bark EST $1,800 - 2,500 PROVENANCE Mimi Arts and Crafts, NT Cooee Art Gallery, NSW Private Collection, NSW Paddy Fordham’s innovative talent won him quick recognition soon after he began painting. Steeped in ancient stories from a young age, he learned traditional bark painting from his father. In time, he became the senior elder of the Rembarrnga people dividing his time between making artworks and leading the Rembarrnga in important ceremonial activities throughout the Northern Territory.

Paddy’s unique depiction of the Mimi(h) Spirit was the centre piece for many of his paintings. He often painted a dancing Mimi(h) Man, who looks over the land as a protector and only comes out at night.

Another favourite theme was the depiction and stories associated with Balangalngalang.These ambiguous beings are responsible for seeing that things in the human world go in accordance with the will of the spirits.

Mimi(h) Spirits are believed to have been responsible for teaching aspects of the Law that governs the conduct and morality of the Arnhem Land clans.

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LOT #81 PADDY JAMPIN JAMINJI (C.1912 - 1996) Krill Krill Ceremony Dance Board (Cyclone Tracy), 1979 40 x 69 cm (irregular) | 55 x 83 cm (frame) natural earth pigments on construction board EST $2,500 - 3,500 PROVENANCE Neil McLeod, field collected, Kimberley, WA Burrinja Gallery, Vic Private Collection, Tas Note verso reads: Krill Krill Rover Thomas Cyclone 1979. (I understand this to be the Cyclone Tracy dreaming of Rover Thomas that formed part of his Krill Krill ceremony. The image was painted at the direction of, and with the approval of Rover, and was used as a ceremonial dance board that was not originally intended for sale.)

LITERATURE

Cf. Ryan J. Images of Power: Aboriginal Art of the Kimberley National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne 1993 p. 38; for a closely related example depicting the same subject matter and from the same period in the collection of the National Museum of Australia Canberra.

Painted by Paddy Jaminji with the instruction of his nephew Rover Thomas, this work is representative of Cyclone Tracy. Ngumurliwarra – the Gidga word for Cyclone – can be literally broken down and translated as Ngumurli, meaning ‘Dark’, and Warra, meaning ‘Growing’.

During the Wet Season, immediately after Cyclone Tracy destroyed the city of Darwin in 1975, Rover Thomas had a dream relating to the death of a Gidja woman who lived at Dunham River, an Aboriginal-run pastoral station 90 km north of Turkey Creek. The woman had been travelling from Dunham River to Hall’s Creek the previous Wet Season.

The vehicle she had been travelling in overturned and slid off the road at a small creek just south of the Aboriginal settlement at Turkey Creek.

Rover’s dream explains the cause of her death and tells of the travels of her spirit back to the place where she was born. This relates to traditional sites of specific importance to people now resident at Turkey Creek. The dream was incorporated into a song-cycle (KrillKrill) by Rover Thomas and George Mung Mung. Paddy Jampinji, Rover’s classificatory uncle, drew the paintings for the first ceremonies in the mid 1970s using recycled construction wood and traditional materials.The boards were carried on the shoulders of the participants in the ceremony. Each painting represents a specific location or event connected with the travel of the woman’s spirit.

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LOT #82 FREDDIE TIMMS (1946 - 2017) Antspring, 1999 135 x 122 cm natural earth pigments on Belgian linen EST $12,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Jirrawun Aboriginal Art Corporation, WA Cat No. 599.79 Watters Gallery, NSW Private Collection, Vic Born at Police Hole c.1946, Freddie Timms followed in his father’s footsteps as a stockman at Lissadell Station. At the age of twenty, he set out to explore and work on other stations. It was during this time that he met and worked alongside Rover Thomas, who was to have a deep and lasting influence on him. In 1985, Timms left Lissadell once more

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to settle at Warmun, where he worked as a gardener at the Argyle Mine. He began painting in 1986, inspired by the elder artists already painting at Frog Hollow, a small outstation attached to the community at Warmun, Turkey Creek.

In a career that spanned more than 20 years, Freddie Timms became known for aerial, map-like visions of country, less concerned with ancestral associations than with tracing the responses and refuges of the Gija people as they encountered the ruthlessness and brutality of colonisation and station life in the cattle industry.

Freddie Timms was foremost amongst those Gija artists of the second generation. His is a unique perspective on the history of white interaction with the Gija people.

LOT #83 ROVER JOOLAMA THOMAS (1926 - 1998) Untitled - Barramundi Dreaming, 1988 74 x 203 cm | 80 x 209 cm (frame) natural earth pigments on canvas EST $35,000 - 55,000 PROVENANCE Commissioned by Dr Peter Elliott Thence by decent Private Collection, NSW Signed ‘Rover’ verso According to the story that accompanies this work, a beautiful Barramundi made its home in the Tharram river at Bandicoot Bar. The Barramundi travelled up the Dunham River, past where the Worrworrum community is today. A group of old women gave chase

and it swam into a cave near the area now known as Barramundi Gap. As it entered the cave, the women prepared to catch it with nets made from dried and rolled Spinifex grass. The Barramundi realised it was trapped in the shallow water of the cave entrance and tried to escape by swimming to the other end. But the Barramundi could not find a way out. It returned to the entrance of the cave where the women were waiting with their nets. The big Barramundi swam towards the women and leapt over them, swimming through to Glen Hill, where some of its scales scraped off on the rocks as it passed through. You can see the scales of Barramundi Gap near the Glen Hill community’s first gate - they are the white rocks on the top of the ranges and they gleam bright when the sun hits them in the late afternoon.

As the Barramundi died, it turned into a white stone. Its fat (a delicacy to the local people) became the pink diamonds and its organs became the brown and yellow stones sprinkled across the land.Three of the old women who chased the Barramundi to Cattle Creek peered into the water to look for it.They too turned into stone, forever becoming part of the landscape. Today there are three stone formations overlooking the creek.

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LOT #84 NYURAPAYIA (MRS BENNETT) NAMPITJINPA (1935 - 2013) Untitled, 2005 152 x 182 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $40,000 - 60,000 PROVENANCE Yanda Art, NT Cat No. MRSB200416 Desert Art Distributors, SA Private Collection, SA Accompanied by a folio of 24 images of Mrs Bennett creating the artwork and a hardcopy of the book ‘The Art of Nyurapayia Nampitjinpa (Mrs Bennett)’.

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Nyurapayia Nampitjinpa was born in Pitjantjatjara country, and spent much of her childhood in the Gibson Desert. By the time she walked in from the bush to the ration depot at Haasts Bluff and first encountered mission life, she had become a healer. She later moved to Kintore, and then to Tjukurla, across the West Australian border.

Nyurapayia was a close associate of the key painters who shaped the women’s painting movement in the early to mid-1990s. She painted only relatively minor, mid-grade formulaic works for Papunya Tula, before Chris Simon took her on and rebuilt his Yanda Art business around her. Living comfortably under Simons’ wing, she hit her creative peak painting large, complex canvases depicting her ancestral rockholes in dark, curved lines on black or white shimmering grounds.

Her depictions of the sand-dune country and surrounding rocky outcrops bear a relationship to the designs used for body painting during the inma ceremonial dance. At the time of her death in February 2013, Nyurapayia had reached the pinnacle of desert law and sacred knowledge and was revered by women throughout the Western Desert.

LOT #85 DHAPA GANAMBARR 2 AND YALMAKAN MARAWILI Dupun (Hollow Log), 2007 254 x 12 x 12 cm | 189 x 10 x 10 cm natural earth pigments on wood EST $5,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Buku Lungu Art Centre, NT Cat No. 322IL and 3251S Private Collection, NSW Lorrkon, hollow log cofďŹ ns, are central to the funeral ceremony. The hollow logs, which housed the ochred bones of the deceased person, were painted with clan designs and placed into the ground where they were left to decay naturally.

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LOT #86 PATRICK MUNG MUNG (C.1944 - ) Yunurri, 2007 90 x 120 cm natural earth pigments on canvas EST $5,000 - 7,000 PROVENANCE Warmun Art Centre, WA Cat No. 185/07 Private Collection, NSW Patrick Mung Mung, the son for renowned Warmun teacher and elder George Mung Mung, creates works influenced in their composition and use of traditional ochres by the previous generation of Warmun artists, including Rover Thomas and Paddy Jaminji.

Born at Spring Creek (Yunurri), Patrick worked as a stockman at Texas Downs Station and the nearby stations in the East Kimberley region

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of Western Australia for many years. When his father died in 1991, Patrick took on his father’s role as the senior artist, responsible for the Law and culture of his extended family. Patrick was instrumental in the establishment of the Warmun Art centre during the late 1990s.

In this work, Patrick has painted Yunurri, across the other side of the Old River from Texas Downs Station.This is yawal yawal country (black soil country), which becomes very boggy when wet. There is a spring and many big black rocks, referred to in the Gidja language as Jewidirrin.

LOT #87 LILY KARADADA (C.1937 - ) Wandjina - Rain Spirits, 2004 90 x 120 cm natural earth pigments, clay and charcoal on Belgian linen EST $3,500 - 4,500 PROVENANCE Narrangunny Art Traders, WA Cat No. N-2391-LK Cooee Art Gallery, NSW Private Collection, WA Lily Karadada - The last of the great Wandjina painters, April 2011, Cooee Art Gallery, NSW EXHIBITED Lily Karadada: Wandjina Spirit, May 2014, Cooee Art Gallery, NSW

Lily Karadada was born in her father’s country, the land of the Pitjarintjin people around the Prince Regent River on the Mitchell Plateau in Western Australia’s far north. Here, images of the Wandjina and Bradshaw figures are found in many of the caves.

It is said that the Wandjina is the embodiment of the rain spirit and ancestor of the Wonnambal, Ngarinyin, and Worrora peoples of the North-West Kimberley. Wandjina are seen decorating the walls of caves in the plateaus along the North Kimberley coast. They are unique to this region. They are always pictured from a frontal aspect in red ochres. They have no mouths, large black eyes, and a slit or beak-like nose. Lily is renowned for depicting these spirits in a veil of dots, representing the rain generated by the spirit and the blood/water bond between man and nature. Dreamtime mythology has it that the Wandjina emerge from the clouds and bring the monsoon rains each season, thereby ensuring the survival of all living things.

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LOT #88 TONY ALBERT (1981 - ) Mid Century Modern - Decorated Baobab Nuts, 2016 50 x 50 cm | 53 x 53 cm (frame) pigment print on paper, edition 1/2 EST $2,500 - 3,500 PROVENANCE Sullivan + Strumpf, NSW Private Collection, Vic Tony Albert, a descendant of the Girramay, Yidinji, and KukuYalanji peoples, was born in Townsville, North Queensland. He graduated from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane in 2004. He promptly joined urban-based Indigenous art collective ProppaNOW, which included artists Richard Bell, Jennifer Herd, Vernon Ah Kee, Fiona Foley, and Bianca Beetson.

Albert employs a wide range of mediums, including painting, photography, and mixed media, to engage with political, historical, and cultural Aboriginal and Australian history. Like Bell and Ah Kee, the use of text is essential to Albert’s practice.

Tony Albert’s techniques and imagery displace traditional Australian Aboriginal aesthetics and employ a kind of conceptuality. Appropriating textual references from sources as diverse as popular music, film, literary fiction, and art history, Albert plays with the tension arising from the visibility and, in turn, invisibility of Aboriginal People across news media, literature, and the visual arts. Central to his way of working is his expansive collection of ‘Aboriginalia’ (a term the artist coined to describe kitschy objects and images that feature naive portrayals of Aboriginality).

Albert creates work that is not only visually appealing, but also acts as a vehicle for stimulating discussion and communicating historical attitudes toward Australia’s Indigenous peoples.

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LOT #89 CLINTON NAIN (1971 - ) All the King’s Children, 2011 149 x 60 cm acrylic and enamel on linen EST $3,500 - 4,500 PROVENANCE Commissioned from the artist Corporate Collection, Vic Born in Melbourne and of Torres Strait Islander heritage, Clinton Nain creates vivid abstract canvases using domestic materials such as heritage coloured house paint, bitumen paint, and household bleach.

He employs a range of motifs in his art that refer to the dominant culture and symbols of its power, ranging from language, religion, land, country, and the history of the dispossessed.

Nain is well known for his White King, Blak Queen series, a visual pun on colour and sexuality that explored the tainted path of colonisation through a black feminine perspective. Since his earliest days as an art school graduate, Clinton Nain has established a significant profile in the critical debates of contemporary Australian art. Though his works have a naive and unfinished quality, they are aesthetically and conceptually intellectual and highly developed.

LOT #90 DESTINY DEAKIN (1957 - ) Meloncholy [sic], 2000 78 x 99 cm | 101 x 119 cm (frame) light jet print from scanned Polaroid original, Edition 9/15 EST $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, NSW Private Collection, NSW Destiny Deacon is of KuKu (Cape York) and Erub/Mer (Torres Strait) heritage. Her photographs are often spontaneous and playful set-ups of visual puns and cheeky parodies.

Meloncholy is an image from her 2000 series ‘Sad & Bad’. The image, first taken using Polaroid film and later printed in enlarged form as a lightjet print features a dismembered doll - a recurring character in her photographs. Deacon collects rescued objects from second-hand shops and ‘adopts’ them in order to build a collection of characters for the stories she tells.

This work is a mad picnic tableau. The institutional separation of Indigenous children from their mothers makes the figure of the Aboriginal baby a particularly potent one politically. Deacon articulates this trauma in ‘Meloncholy’, detaching the doll’s body from its head and the watermelon from its rind. The emptied rind of the melon becomes a crib for the doll’s body, much like a coolamon, in which parents would rest their sleeping infants in traditional society. The carved-out fruit is joined with the doll’s head to create a hybrid body of pink flesh, separated from its skin. Through these playful but dark associations, Deacon toys with the serious consequences of racism and the melancholy legacy of the families of the Stolen Generations.

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LOT #91 TONY ALBERT (1981 - ) Untitled, 2015 27 x 22 cm | 38 x 31 cm (frame) pigment print on paper EST $1,500 - 2,500 PROVENANCE Sullivan + Strumpf, NSW Private Collection, Vic Tony Albert, a descendant of the Girramay, Yidinji, and KukuYalanji peoples, was born in Townsville, North Queensland. He graduated from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane in 2004. He promptly joined urban-based Indigenous art collective ProppaNOW, which included artists Richard Bell, Jennifer Herd, Vernon Ah Kee, Fiona Foley, and Bianca Beetson.

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Albert employs a wide range of mediums, including painting, photography, and mixed media, to engage with political, historical, and cultural Aboriginal and Australian history. Like Bell and Ah Kee, the use of text is essential to Albert’s practice.

Tony Albert’s techniques and imagery displace traditional Australian Aboriginal aesthetics and employ a kind of conceptuality. Appropriating textual references from sources as diverse as popular music, film, literary fiction, and art history, Albert plays with the tension arising from the visibility and, in turn, invisibility of Aboriginal People across news media, literature, and the visual arts. Central to his way of working is his expansive collection of ‘Aboriginalia’ (a term the artist coined to describe kitschy objects and images that feature naive portrayals of Aboriginality).

Albert creates work that is not only visually appealing, but also acts as a vehicle for stimulating discussion and communicating historical attitudes toward Australia’s Indigenous peoples.

LOT #92 LIN ONUS (1948 - 1996) Pitoa Garkman, 1994 50 x 74.5 cm | 81 x 104 cm (frame) screenprint on Whatmans matt 270 gsm paper (Edn # 30/85) EST $3,500 - 4,500 PROVENANCE Created by the artist with Port Jackson Press, Vic Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Vic Private Collection, NT Through his practice as an artist and advocate, Lin Onus played a pivotal role in the emergence of urban Aboriginal art. A Yorta Yorta man from Cumeraganga on the Murray River, he grew up in Melbourne, strongly influenced by the work of realist painters like Albert Namatjira. He began his own career as a watercolorist and photo-realist. Onus’s work

evolved after his ‘adoption’ by Arnhem Land elders in the mid-1980s, which conferred upon him the right to use certain traditional stories and designs. This enabled him to develop a distinctive visual language.

Through a fusion of Western and Aboriginal systems of organising space, vision, and design, he sought to portray landscape as a carrier of myth, history, and ideology.

The title of this work means ‘frogs’ in the Djinang language of Central Arnhem Land. Here, frogs, painted with traditional body markings, sit with their heads popping above the surface of the water in a still pond surrounded by gum trees. The work conveys the message that beyond the immediately apparent lies the Dreaming reality, accessible only if one is open to its presence.

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LOT #93 MINNIE PWERLE (1910 - 2006) Awelye - Atnwengerrp, 2003 91 x 60 cm | 94 x 63 cm (frame) synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $2,500 - 3,500 PROVENANCE Dacou Gallery, SA Cat No. DG04649 Private Collection, Vic The manner in which Minnie Pwerle created her works was the result of an urgency to reconnect to the past and to keep the Dreaming a living reality. Painting after painting depicted the body designs applied to women’s breasts and limbs for the ceremonial revivification of her country.

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These bold linear patterns of stripes and curves evoke the movement of the women as they dance during ceremony. After smearing their bodies with animal fat, they trace these designs onto their breasts, arms and thighs, singing as they take turns being ‘painted up’. Then, often by firelight, they dance in formation accompanied by ritual singing. The songs relate to the Dreamtime stories of ancestral travel, as well as plants, animals, and natural forces.

Awelye - Women’s ceremony - demonstrates respect for the land. In performing these ceremonies, they ensure well-being and happiness within their community.

LOT # 94 TJAYANKA WOODS (C.1935 - ) Kungkarrakalpa (Seven Sisters), 2009 120 x 87 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Papulankutja Artists, WA Cat No. 09-668 Vivien Anderson Gallery, Vic Private Collection, Vic EXHIBITED Anmanari Brown & Tjayanka Woods, Kungkarrakalpa – The Seven Sisters , 14 April – 15 May, 2010,Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria

Kungkarrakalpa is an important Dreamtime myth throughout the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands and beyond. The artist’s country is marked and defined by the site created during the relentless pursuit and engagement of seven sisters by Wati Nyiru, a lustful old man who, contrary to traditional law, wanted to take one of the sisters as his wife.Travelling across the desert, the sisters stopped at Kuru Ala, where Nyiru turned himself into a Wayanu (quandong) tree.

Unsuspecting, the sisters collected the fruit to eat. Realising the Wayanu was, in fact, a Nyiru trick, they fled to a cave. This epic creation story reaches its conclusion when the sisters flee into the sky to become the star constellation known as the Pleiades.

Nuanced, multilayered, and especially important for the women of this region, some aspects of the story are only told in whispers. The places where the sisters travelled and rested can be traced; their actions created landmarks through the desert.

Tjayanka Woods was one of the pioneers of the APY lands painting movement, which began in 2000. Born close to Kaḻayapiṯi, a rock hole in the Great Victoria Desert of South Australia, she grew up in the bush with her family before any contact with Euro-Australian society.

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LOT #95 KATHLEEN NGAL (1930 - ) Bush Plum Dreaming, 2004 150 x 89 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $2,500 - 3,500 PROVENANCE Delmore Gallery, NT Cat No. 03B001 Thomas Vroom Collection, The Netherlands Cooee Art, NSW Private Collection NSW Kathleen’s works can be interpreted as sophisticated mind maps, depicting cultural knowledge of her country as well as its physical geography.

Thousands of dots of colour are rained across her brilliant canvases, denoting the varied flora and geographical locations of the Bush Plum.

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The site depicted is Arlperre on Utopia Station. This is country that belongs to the Ngal and Kemarr custodians, who paint the Bush Plum or Conkleberry. It only thrives once every seven years, after huge storms.

Kathleen’s paintings can be predominantly white, representing the petals of its flowers, or a range of orange, red, blue, purple, and yellow, depending on the different degrees of ripeness of the plum. In this work we see the plant’s final flourish, as white dots overlay the canvas, representing the sun-dried leaves, seeds, husks, and grasses of Arlperre.

LOT #96 YAKARI NAPALTJARRI (C.1950 - 2015) Ngaminya, 2011 122 x 61 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $5,000 - 7,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. YN1107036 Private Collection, NT Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Papunya Tula Artists

Yakari Napaltjarri is a Pintupi artist who was born west of the current day Kiwirrkurra community. She was one of the last Desert nomads to come out of the desert in 1984, along with renowned artists and Wallimpirringa and his brothers Walala and Thomas Tjapaltjarri and their respective families.

This painting depicts designs associated with the rockhole and soakage water site of Ngaminya, just to the south-west of the Kiwirrkura in Western Australia.The roundels show the rockholes at this site. During mythological times, a group of women camped here after travelling from Marrapinti rockhole, further to the west. While in the area, they gathered the edible berries known as kampurarrpa, or desert raisin, from the small shrub solanum centrale. These berries can be eaten straight from the bush, but are also ground into a paste and cooked in the coals to form a type of damper. The circles surrounding the canvas represent the kampurarrpa berries.The women continued their travels further east, passing through the nearby rockhole site of Wirrulnga before travelling north-west to Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay).

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LOT #97 YAKARI NAPALTJARRI (C.1950 - 2015) Tjuntulpul, 2010 46 x 38 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen EST $500 - 800 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. YN1010132 Private Collection, NT Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Papunya Tula Artists Yakari Napaltjarri is a Pintupi artist who was born west of the current day Kiwirrkurra community. She was one of the last Desert nomads to come out of the desert in 1984, along with renowned artists and

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Wallimpirringa and his brothers Walala and Thomas Tjapaltjarri and their respective families.

The roundels in this painting show the rockholes at Tjuntulpul, west of the Kiwirrkura.The surrounding line work depicts the sandhills adjacent to these sites. The mythology of the region tells of a group of women, represented here by the U-shaped spaces, who camped here before travelling east to Marrapinti. During their travels, they gathered the edible berries known as kampurarrpa, or desert raisin, from the small shrub solanum centrale. These berries can be eaten straight from the bush, but are also ground into a paste and cooked in the coals to form a type of damper.The women continued their travels further east, passing through the nearby rockhole site of Wirrulnga before travelling north-west to Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay).

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Auction Title & # #6 Indigenous Fine Art Auction 23 June 2020

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