CATALOGUE | Auction November 27th 2018

AUCTION | Aboriginal Works of Art Tuesday 27th November 2018

AUCTION | Aboriginal Works of Art Tuesday 27th November 2018 7PM Gala Auction Launch Thursday 22nd November 6 - 8 pm Viewing Times Friday 23rd - Monday 26th 10am - 5pm Tuesday 27th 10am - 2pm

Auction Location | Cooee Art 326 Oxford St. Paddington, NSW W | www.cooeeart.com.au/marketplace/auction/1156 P | +61 2 8057 6789 E | marketplace@cooeeart.com.au

ADRIAN NEWSTEAD OAM Founding Director - Senior Specialist 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 Director - Specialist 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. She has been a member of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia board since 2017.

KATHLEEN ROBERTS Auction & Gallery Administrator Kathleen Roberts has a Bachelor of Arts majoring in History, Politics & International Relations from Edith Cowan University W.A., and a Masters in Museum & Heritage Studies from the University of Sydney. She is a Juris Doctor candidate at the Australian National University. Pursuing her interest in the field of art and cultural property law she has attended seminars at The World Intellectual Property Organisation, UNESCO and UniversitÊ de Genève. Kathleen is a former administrator for Aboriginal & Oceanic Art at a prominent Sydney auction house, an active member of The Art Gallery Society of NSW, and joined Cooee Art in March 2017.

Welcome to the second 2018 Cooee Art MarketPlace Aboriginal Fine Art offering. To be held on November 27th multi-vendor auction features 88 works from 43 private collections in Australia and overseas. The estimated sale value is $1.0 - $1.2 million.

The sale includes a number of highly significant works including paintings by the three artists who are credited as having initiated the Western Desert Art movement – clan brother’s Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, and their ‘brother in arms’ Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa.

Tim Leura and Clifford Possum grew up in the same house under the sharp eye of Tim’s father, One Pound Jimmy Tjungarrayi and shared the country around Mount Allan and Napperby Cattle Stations. Both men were highly educated in the tribal customs and rituals of the region.

Works by Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri are rare due to his premature death (in 1984) at the dawn of the contemporary movement and his cultural cache amongst museums and collecting institutions. Yet no less than 3 of his works will be offered in this sale and each are exceptional in their own right. The highlight is Untitled (Rainmaker Bird Ceremony), 1972 (Lot 42). It is the prototype for brother Clifford’s Emu Coroboree Man, painted in February 1972, the first painting created by Possum in the Papunya shed specifically for Bardon. (sold Sotheby’s July 2005, $411,750). Tim Leura often created motifs, compositions and graphic elements that Clifford in turn used in his own work - Leura taking on the role of creative director and Possum following up with a stronger and more conceptual graphic representation. This extraordinary early board carries a presale estimate of $80,000-100,000.

Another painting by Leura depicts an aspect of the story that became Possum’s leitmotif. Love Story, 1979 (Lot 39)(Est. $30,000-40,000) will be offered along with a magnificent rendition of the story by Clifford Possum himself. Love Story at Ngarlu, 1991 (Lot 49) was illustrated lavishly with an extensive explanation of the iconography in Dr. Vivien Johnson’s monograph, The Art of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, 1994, and has travelled extensively in Europe and North America. This tale of incestuous lust and the magical spells cast by an old Tjungurrayi man in order to seduce a woman of the wrong skin, is estimated at $80,000-120,000.

Rainbow Storm Dreaming, 1971 (Lot 38) by the third founding artist Kaapa Tjampitjinpa is an interesting formalisation of the component elements of the Water Dreaming that include men in caves, rain, clouds, rainbow, running water, waterholes and underground water. This rare board was only recently ‘discovered’ amongst an assorted collection of bric-a-brac in a garage sale in far north Queensland and authenticated following close examination by conservators. Estimated at just $14,000-18,000 it could be the ‘find’ of the sale.

Amongst the many other fascinating and highly collectable works in this sale are a very early West Kimberley board painted in ochre and gum resin depicting a ceremony by Jarinyanu David Downs (Lot 31) carrying an estimate of $25,000-35,000, a beautiful rendition of Rainbow Jowie - Lake Billiluna by East Kimberley master Rover Thomas (Lot 35) (Est $50,000-60,000); and a number of fine works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Cooee Art MarketPlace charges buyers just 15% commission compared to 25% through other auction houses. Owned by Cooee Art, Australia’s oldest exhibiting Indigenous fine art gallery, its specialist resources have taken decades to build and are available free of charge to both sellers and potential buyers. You can discover a wealth of information on all of the major artists whose works are included in this catalogue on our Cooee Art website.

LOT #1 John Mawurndjul (1952 - ) Namarnkon - Female Lightning Spirit, c. 1980 90 x 25 cm natural earth pigment on stringy bark $5,000 - 7,000 PROVENANCE Maningrida Arts and Culture, NT Cat No. G228/ORR Private Collection, FNQ Purchased directly from the Maningrida art coordinator Charlie Godjuwa in the early 1980s. Incribed MARWUNDJAL verso.

Mawurndjul painted collaboratively with his elder brother Jimmy Njiminjuma until the late 1970s. At this early stage in his painting career the primary subject matter for his work was the mythology of the surrounding environment at Milmilngkan. From the time that this painting was created and throughout the early to mid 1980s, Mawurndjul painted small barks of Ngalyod (the Rainbow Serpent); other spirit beings including Namarrkon (the Lightning Spirit); and various depictions of the local natural species, such as fish, bandicoots and possum, with precise attention to anatomical detail.

Mawurndjul’s 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 artists like Yirawala, Peter Marralwanga and Mick Kubarkku incorporated rarrk designs into their art this ‘design element’ remained secondary to the figurative elements, and rarely left the interior of the figure, leaving a plain background. This came in time to be thought of as the quintessential Central and Western Arnhem Land style.

Mawurndjul, in contrast, increasingly allowed the rarrk designs to dominate, filling both the interior and surrounding space of his figures and by 1988 he had abandoned figurative iconography all but completely.

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LOT #2 Patsy Anguburra Lulpunda (1989 - 2000) Four Wandjina Birds, 2000 72 x 72 cm natural earth pigment on canvas $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Neil McLeod Fine Art, VIC Cat No. NM4815 Art Mob Gallery, TAS Cat No. AM15152 Private Collection, TAS During the last decade of her life Patsy Lulpunda lived on the Price Regent River near Mowandjum and created hair belts, stone axes and other items of material culture. Her first paintings were created at the age of 100 years, whilst visiting the great Kimberley custodian and story teller Jack Dale during a workshop organised in 1998. She participated in several painting workshops at his home before her death at 102 at the start of the millennium.

Lulpunda’s Wororra name ‘Anguburra’ refers to the native honeybee that produces the most exquisitely tasting honey. It was a delightful and most fitting name for a woman whose sprightly and spirited engagement with life extended her autumn years beyond all expectation.

Anguburra witnessed and experienced great cultural transformations during her long life, given her presence when Wororra culture was yet to experience the influence and impact of European culture.

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LOT #3 Rammey Ramsey (1935 - ) Untitled (My Country - Warlawoon), 2007 80 x 100 cm natural earth pigment and acrylic binder on composition board $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Jirrawun Arts, WA Cat No. RR112007117 Private Collection, QLD Private Collectio, VIC Ramsey is a senior Gija lawman who, like his contemporary Paddy Bedford, began painting relatively late in life for Jirrawun Aboriginal Arts Corporation. This work reflects his country at Elgee Cliffs, North West of Halls Creek, also known as Warlawoon Country. It references roads, stockyards, waterholes and vast gorge country.

According to Ramsey ‘When the strong wind comes blowing from the east it throws dust everywhere. It is a place for the rainbow snake, the dangerous one. In early days if strange people went there the people had to perform a welcoming ceremony, putting water from the country on them (the strangers). Lots of people would come to dance: Joonba style. My parents lived there.’

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LOT #4 Bill Tjapaltjarri Whiskey (c.1920 - 2008) Rock Holes and Country Near The Olgas, 2007 90 x 45 cm synthetic polymer paint on linen $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Watiyawarnu Art Centre, NT Cat No. 7707.505 Palya Proper Fine Art Cat No. PPFABW09, NT Private Collection, NT Bill Whiskey’s country lay to the north of Kata Tjuta (the Olgas), hidden in some of the most arid and uncompromising land on the continent. From the late 1880s police were posted to protect the interests of the advancing pastoralists in this region, and they pursued those tribesmen who killed cattle to protect their waterholes far into the ‘back country’. They were tracked, chained and taken for trial in Port Augusta. As a climate of fear descended, Anangu (Western Desert people) left their country for the relative safety of mission-run ration stations. The country to the west and southwest of the MacDonnell Ranges was gradually depopulated, and during the 1920s, a period of prolonged drought saw Anangu gravitate to outposts established by Lutheran evangelists on the margins of the desert. Bill Whiskey and his family lived for a time at Areyonga, before moving further north to settle at Amunturrngu (Mount Liebig), then an outstation of Papunya. He chose not to participate in painting until 2005, when in his mid 80s, he took up the brush.

In this painting, Rock Holes and Country Near The Olgas 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 #5 Minnie Pwerle (1910 - 2006) Awelye Atnwengerrp, 2004 120 x 92 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $5,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Dacou Gallery, NT Cat No. DG05931 Private Collection, NT

Minnie’s career shared much in common with that of her sister-in-law, the great Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Both began painting in their late 70s and both created work for a period of seven years. Despite a short early period during which Emily painted tightly controlled painstaking fields of tiny dots obscuring detailed iconography beneath, both painted the majority of their works equally gesturally and produced a prodigious output. Both artists painted works that were immensely popular, most especially amongst women, and were able to support a number of close relatives with the income they generated.

The bold linear patterns of stripes and curves throughout this particular painting depict the women’s ceremonial body paint design. The songs they sing during preparation for ceremony (Awelye) relate to Dreamtime stories of ancestral travel as well as plants, animals and natural forces. In performing these ceremonies women demonstrate their respect for the land and ensure abundance during the season ahead, wellbeing and happiness within their clan and community.

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LOT #6 Billy Joongoorra Thomas (c.1920 - 2012) Waarla, 2000 100 x 80 cm natural earth pigment on Belgian linen $7,000 - 9,000 PROVENANCE Red Rock Arts, WA Cat No. 09/00 Walker Lane Gallery, WA Cat No. KP1062 Private Collection, WA

Billy Thomas began painting on canvas in 1995 after he approached Waringarri Arts in Kununurra to supply him with painting materials. Prior to that, he did not belong to any community of artists. He knew his country intimately and never ceased his ceremonial immersion and involvement within it. Right up until his final years, he continued to spend long periods ‘out bush’ before returning to Billiluna or Kununurra to paint. He was revered as a senior lawman and healer, custodian of secret initiation rites and ceremonial songlines.

Invariably his works are about ceremony; the formations of people in ritual, the body painting designs and the ground patterns, associated with various ceremonies.

Waarla is a huge mudflat in the Great Sandy Desert that becomes a vast lake after rain. It is an historic meeting place where diverse desert rites are maintained and taught to young initiates.

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LOT #7 Queenie McKenzie (1930 - 1998) A Group of Seven Framed Drawings depicting Christian Themes, 1995 ink on paper $10,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Drawn at Warmun School. Turkey Creek WA, 1995 Field Collected by Neil McLeod, VIC Art Mob Gallery, TAS Cat No. AM 14554/17 Each work signed verso with accompanying description

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1. Jesus Man and the Rainbow Snake - “Our Culture� Snake bin come from his home under the ground. Bin talking with Jesus business you know. Size: 22 x 32.5 cm, 35 x 44 cm frame 2. Jesus Looking at Sheep for Ngalangangpum Corroboree. Size: 22 x 29 cm, 35 x 44 cm frame 3. Waiting From Father to Arrive from Broome - Long way him bin go. Chairs under from shade. Size: 24 x 32.5 cm, 35 x 44 cm frame 4. Father Man Mr Jobst walking past boab tree. Coming to tell us the God story. Size: 29 x 40 cm, 42 x 53 cm frame 5. Father Mr Jobst walking on the road to see us to follow that Jesus man. Size: 33 x 50.5 cm, 43 x 60 cm frame 6. Jesus the Man carrying the cross with the Greek or Roman man and whip. Size: 50.5 x 33 cm, 60 x 43 cm frame 7. Jesus Man bin baptise us mob. Size: 33 x 50 cm, 43 x 60 cm frame

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LOT #8 Gordon Bennett (1955 - 2014) Couldn’t Be Fairer, 1994 40 x 30 cm (irregular) synthetic polymer paint on wood $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Peter Bellas Gallery, QLD Harvison Gallery, WA Private Collection, WA Glued to the back of this painting is page 184 from the book Blood On the Wattle by Bruce Elder published in 1988. An edited excerpt reads as follows: ‘Of the Queensland Police Force it is impossible to write with patience. It is enough to say of it that this body, organised and paid for by us, is sent to work which its officers are forbidden to report in detail, and that a true record of its proceedings would shame us before our fellow countrymen in every part of the British Empire. When the police have entered on the scene, the race conflict goes on apace. It is a fitful war of extermination waged upon the blacks, something after the fashion in which other settlers wage war upon noxious wild beasts.... From the Queenslander Newspaper.

Well known Aboriginal activist Mick Miller made a movie called Couldn’t Be Fairer about the conditions of Aborigines in Queensland in the 1980s. In the movie one Aboriginal recorded his experiences with the local police force.

They threw me to the ground, they kicked me and busted my toungue. No whitefellers get locked up here, its all blackfellers. Chook Henry he got a flogging from the coppers too. They gave him a hiding and when he was knocked to the ground they pissed on him.

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F.J. Gillen, ‘an expert on Aborigines’ was asked at a Senate Select Committee meeting on the Aborigines Bill in 1899, whether a black and white infant were equal in the matter of intelligence. He replied that they were, at that period of life. But even if an Aborigine were to be a graduate of a university, and returned to his place of origin, he would revert to barbarism.

LOT #9 Paddy Bedford (1922 - 2007) Untitled , 2003 50 x 70 cm gouache on board $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Jirrawun Arts, WA Cat No. PB-WB-2003-125 The Estate of Paddy Bedford, WA William Mora Galleries, VIC Private Collection, QLD Paddy Bedford was born at Bedford Downs Station in the east Kimberley c.1922. Like many of his Gidja countrymen, Bedford worked as a stockman for the majority of his life in return for rations of tea, flour and tobacco.

Though he had been involved with ceremonial painting all his life, it was by chance that a gallery dealer happened upon some of his boards in a rubbish tip in the mid 1990s. From such humble beginnings Paddy began painting formally in 1997, with the formation of Jirrawun Aboriginal Arts.

Over the following decade his painting style developed from simple expanses of flat ochre to masterful luminous textured surfaces.

His health and dexterity at various times dictated the medium in which he worked. Introduced to gouache and paper after 2000, he created intimate works that were equally successful as those depicted in ochres. In both mediums his paintings are imbued with authority and an absolutely distinctive individual language within the east Kimberley conventions.

Paddy Bedford, an enigmatic octogenarian, stood out as a uniquely talented artist. He was amongst the few selected to contribute to the permanent installation at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris and was honoured, during his lifetime, with the unprecedented recognition of a retrospective exhibition and a major catalogue by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney during 2007, which toured nationally.

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LOT #10 Sally Gabori (Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda) (1924 - 2007) Dibirdibi Country, 2007 122 x 91.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $5,000 - 7,000 PROVENANCE Mornington Island Arts & Crafts, QLD Cat No. 2448-L-SG-0707 The Harding Family Collection, NSW This painting is accompanied by Mornington Island Arts & Crafts documentation Illustrated in - ‘My Country - Two’, Noosa Long Weekend Festival 2008 Sally Gabori began her relatively short but spectacular art career in 2005. She had never held a paintbrush or learnt anything of contemporary art when she was given art materials at the age of 81 at her aged care home on Mornington Island. By the time of her death in 2015, she had developed her own painterly language that had taken the Australian art world by storm.

The artist’s statement on the accompanying certification reads: This is where the big saltpan on my husband’s country meets the grassy plain where we collect Malbaa which is the grass we weave into string bags and nets.’

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LOT #11 Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910 - 1996) Yam Flower Dreaming, c.1995 78 x 55 cm (85 x 62 cm framed) synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Dacou Gallery, SA Cat No. DG597 Savah Gallery, NSW Cat No. SS1197106 Private Collection, NSW Accompanied by the original Gallery Savah certificate of authenticity.

Emily Kngwarreye’s paintings of wildflowers reflect a stage in the growth cycle of the wild yam. Emily’s middle name Kame is taken from the yam Dreaming site at Alhalkere.

Emily’s yam story can be found in the vast majority of her works. In this ‘wildflower’ painting Emily captures the brief season when the pencil yam produces bright green foliage and yellowish flowers on the ground’s surface. However, the nutritional value of the yam is hidden underground in the swollen roots and their pod-like attachments, which are difficult to locate as the plant’s unpredictable growth patterns make harvest difficult and specialised. Traditionally much effort is expended across large areas in the harvest of this valuable food.

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LOT #12 Artist Once Known Kimberley Pearl Shell Pedants, c.1960 16 x 12 cm (irregular), 2 x 13 x 2.5 cm (irregular) ochre in-filled engraved pearl shell $1,200 - 1,500 PROVENANCE Private Collection, SA Gallerie Australis, SA Adrian Newstead Private Collection, NSW These shells are worn by young men in the third and final stage of their initiation into manhood and the ‘law’. After this, they are allowed to be with their promised wives. Prior to being fully initiated they can only talk to her and are forbidden to make physical contact.

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LOT #13 Allan Scott, Spencer and Gillen, Charles Mountford and others Collection of research Photographs various sizes photographic images on paper $3,500 - 4,500 PROVENANCE Private Collection, SA Many of these photographs are believed to have been reproduced from glass slides in the collection of the South Australian Museum.

The number stickers adhered to the glass slides is clearly visible.

Of varying size, depicting Aranda men and women at Barrow Creek, James Range, MacDonnel Ranges, and Tennant Creek including seven images by Allan Scott and 20 by Baldwin Spender, James Gillen and Charles Mountford. Also includes excellent large format photographs of Old Mick Tjakamarra, Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, and Uta Uta Jungala.

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LOT #14 Thomas Dick (1877 - 1927) Set of 12 framed Photographic prints, c.1990 12 x 56 x 46 cm photo reproductions on paper $1,500 - 2,500 PROVENANCE Australian Museum Sydney, NSW Private Collection, NSW Set of 12 photographic images depicting the Birpai and Dhungati peoples and their traditional activities on the Hastings, Manning and Maria Rivers, central coast of NSW taken by Thomas Dick.

Thomas Dick was interested in the local Birpai people and concerned with their welfare. He believed that Indigenous people were dying out and, before their way of life was lost forever, sought to record how they had lived before European colonisation. With the help of a group of Birpai, Dick used three cameras — a Ruby Reflex and two Thornton Pickards — to take hundreds of photographs of re-enacted scenes of traditional Birpai activities. He was particularly interested in processes of artefact-making. Today only a fragmented collection of his photographs survives.

In keeping with anthropological practice of the time, Dick annotated his photographs with information about the activities they showed. Individuals were rarely identified. In recent years, Birpai people have looked again at Dick’s images, re-captioning them as pictures of their fathers and grandfathers.

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2.

LOT #15 Artist Once Known $2,800 - 3,800 1.

A Large Rare East Gippsland Club 81 x 62 cm carved and incised hard wood

1.

2.

PROVENANCE Caspian Gallery (Bill Evans), NSW Private Collection, NSW The club of rounded curvilinear form, bulbous handle at one end and tapered flattened sword shape at other. Replete with burnt and incised chevron patterning and rich honeyed patina. (Mounted)

2.

Western Desert Woomera 71 x 11.8 cm carved and incised hard wood PROVENANCE Aboriginal and Pacific Art (Gabriella Roy), NSW Private Collection, NSW The woomera of tapered leaf shape with rich lusterous patina., Incised traditional men’s key design on frontal surface and fine adzing verso. (Mounted)

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Detail

LOT #16 Artist Once Known An Early Aboriginal Spearthrower, Western Australia, c.1890 79 x 12 cm carved and incised hardwood $1,200 - 1,500 PROVENANCE Private Collection, VIC A West Australian spear thrower of classic leaf design, the front with incised men’s zigzag ceremonial design and back finely adzed.

Kangaroo sinew used at the throwing end to hold wooden barb and affect bush repair. Spinifex resin remnants on tip of throwing handle. Mounted.

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LOT #17 Ivan Namirriki Namarrkon - Lightening Spirit, 1982 79 x 34 cm natural earth pigments on bark $2,000 - 3,000 PROVENANCE Purchased in Darwin, 1988 Private Collection, NSW Cooee Art NSW Cat No. 11995 Private Collection, NSW Namarrkon is the Lightning Spirit that lives above the clouds and is associated with the intense electrical storms of kunemeleng, the pre-wet season between October and December. The Spirit is typically illustrated in the rock art and bark paintings of the region with a circuit of lightning encircling its body.

Kulbburru, the stone axes protruding from his arms, legs and lower torso are hurled by Namarrkon when marriage taboos or other aspects of tribal law are broken striking the perpetrators of wrongdoing in the form of lightning and causing the sound of thunder that accompanies the tropical storms of the region.

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LOT #18 Eunice Napangardi (c.1950 - 2005) Bush Banana, 1990 129 x 140 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $3,500 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Field collected by former Police officer Ken Flood in Utopia, NT 1990 Private Collection, VIC Accompanied by an image of the artist with the completed work.

Eunice Napangardi was born at Pikilyi in the early 1950s. She was introduced to painting in the early 1970s when her elder husband Kaapa Tjampitjinpa became the first of the men to use acrylic paint on board at Papunya. Ten years later, Eunice was one of the first women to transpose her traditional art onto canvas. Her paintings marked the entry of feminine colours; a naturalistic representation; and a certain liberty of expression, which was particularly noticeable in women’s art of this early period. This painting is emblematic of her elegant style. Her finest early works are characterised by an unrestrained finesse of detail and a fresh panache of harmonious colour.

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This work expressing her cherished Uparli (Bush Banana) Dreaming exemplifies her innovative artistic ability at this very early stage of the development of women’s art in the Western Desert at its purest and most personal. The plants grow in rock crevices close to dry river beds in Spinifex country. The area of the Dreaming is west of Yuendumu in the Tanami Desert. Eunice was a 45 year old Warlpiri woman when she created this work. She had married her second husband Maxie Tjampitjinpa from Papunya and spoke little English preferring to live a traditional lifestyle near a creek bed at Bond Springs, just north of Alice Springs.

LOT #19 Rover Joolama Thomas (1926 - 1998) Owls at Tunnel Creek, 1984 120 x 47 cm natural earth pigment and resin on construction plywood $14,000 - 16,000 PROVENANCE Field Collected, WA Private Collection, VIC Art Mob, TAS Private Collection, TAS In this painting Rover depicts the Mook Mook Owl and her young at a place called Tunnel Creek. Also depicted is Blue Tongue Lizard Dreaming near the Argyle mine turnoff. The black circle represents a cave and the arch represents the entrance: to the cave.

The Spotted Nightjar and the Owlet Nightjar who in human form created the moieties and the rules of marriage, and other cultural practices are two of the most important totemic beings in the Kimberley region in the North West of Australia. They are associated with Wandjina beings known as Wanalirri, and through the Wunan exchange ceremonial cycle which the owls created, spread affiliation to the Wandjina to the eastern Kimberley. The Wanalirri song cycle composed about 1972 by the Worora elder, Wattie Ngerdu, relates a battle between the Wandjina and humans over the treatment of the owls by children. The ensuing battle nearly caused the destruction of the human race.

The Ancestral Owl, which goes by a number of names, including Mook Mook,is one of the few subjects that the Rover Thomas rendered in a naturalistic fashion in his paintings.

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Image | Adrian Newsted astounded at river’s edge.

Rover Thomas was born in Martu country but he and his brother Charlie Brooks were picked up as young kids by Wally Dowling to become drovers. After working in the cattle industry, Charlie eventually settled back in Martu country while Rover lived out his years amongst the Gija at Turkey Creek.

In 1995, Maxine Taylor and Serge Brooks set up Warmun Traditional Artists in Turkey Creek. The Council provided the building and the art centre managers made their wages by taking a percentage from the sale of paintings. Maxine knew all of Rover’s country as she had had looked after a large number of Rover’s extended family. She had run the local pub and the soup kitchen in the Pilbara where Rover’s family lived and worked for the Department of Indigenous Affairs for more than a decade. At last Rover had people who knew his country, his family, his dreaming places, and his stories.

The original artwork for this screen print was produced during a workshop that was organised by Adrian Newstead and Maxine Taylor with master printmaker Theo Tremblay of Studio One during their first year running the unfunded art centre. The workshop took place in the community on the 12-26 April 1995. In this particular print Rover depicted the major planets in the night sky as seen from Punmu, in his birth country.

After printing the edition at Studio One in Canberra, Adrian Newstead drove to the Kimberley taking the prints to be signed. His car was stolen in Balgo Hills and the prints later recovered from the bottom of the Mary River. This particular print sat on the bottom of the river for more than a month before being recovered.

The story of the loss and recovery of this and other editions is related in Chapter 1 of Adrian Newstead’s book, The Dealer is the Devil, An insider’s history of the Aboriginal Art Trade, 2014.

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LOT #20 Rover Joolama Thomas (1926 - 1998) Punmu - The Universe, 1995 - 1997 76 x 111 cm (image) 94 x 134 cm (framed) screen print on cotton rag paper, natural ochre $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Adrian Newstead Fine Art and Studio One Canberra Cooee Art Gallery, NSW Private Collection, NSW EXHIBITED Toyota Dreaming, Cooee Art Gallery, 1998

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LOT #21 Freddie Timms (1946 - 2017) Spring Creek Head - Triptych, 1997 100 x 60 cm (each panel) natural earth pigments on Belgian linen $10,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Narrangunny Art Traders, WA N-1438-FT Cooee Art Gallery, NSW Cat No. 9279-FT Private Collection, WA EXHIBITED Fredie Timms: My Country, May 2014, Coo-ee Art Gallery, NSW Coo-ee Art Gallery 35th Anniversary Exhibition, December 16- Jan 2017, NSW In a career that has spanned more than 20 years Freddie Timms became known for aerial map-like visions of country that are less concerned with ancestral associations than with tracing the responses and refuges of the Gija people as they encountered the ruthlessness and brutality of colonsation. However, his political nature is characterised by more intimate interpretations of the experience rather than overtly political statements. Freddie Timms was foremost amongst those Gija artists of the second generation.

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LOT #22 Minnie Pwerle (1922 - 2006) Awelye Atnwengerrp, 2001 91 x 123 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Dacou Gallery, SA Cat. No. 06092 Art Mob Gallery, TAS Cat No. AM 12783/16 Private Collection, TAS 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 add 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 has a turn to be ‘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.

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LOT #23 Bill Tjapaltjarri Whiskey (c.1920 - 2008) Rock Holes and Country Near The Olgas, 2008 92.5 x 121 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $8,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Watiyawanu Artists, NT Cat No. 3-08412 Private Collection, NSW Bill Whiskey’s country lay to the north of Kata Tjuta (the Olgas), hidden in some of the most arid and uncompromising land on the continent. From the late 1880s police were posted to protect the interests of the advancing pastoralists in this region, and they pursued those tribesmen who killed cattle to protect their waterholes far into the ‘back country’. They were tracked, chained and taken for trial in Port Augusta. As a climate of fear descended, Anangu (Western Desert people) left their country for the relative safety of mission-run ration stations. The country to the west and southwest of the MacDonnell Ranges was gradually depopulated, and during the 1920s, a period of prolonged drought saw Anangu gravitate to outposts established by Lutheran evangelists on the margins of the desert. Bill Whiskey and his family lived for a time at Areyonga, before moving further north to settle at Amunturrngu (Mount Liebig), then an outstation of Papunya. He chose not to participate in painting until 2005, when in his mid 80s, he took up the brush.

In this painting, Rock Holes and Country Near The Olgas, 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 #24 Abie Kemarre Loy (1975 - ) Bush Leaves, 2012 167 x 167 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Gallerie Australis, SA Private Collection, NSW EXHIBITED Art a Aborigene - Art Elysées 2015, Avenue Champs Elysées, Paris Under Eastern Anmatyerr Law, Abie Loy Kemarre has the right to portray several Dreamings. These include the Bush Hen and Bush Leaf Dreaming. The bush leaf grows in a swamp near some sandhills close to the Utopia region in Abie’s grandfather’s country and it is known for its wonderful curative properties. These bush leaves are able to cure a whole range of illnesses including colds, headaches, and sores.

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LOT #25 Dennis Nona (1973 - ) Dugal, 2008 Ed. No. 14/45 Image Size 125 x 82 cm Paper Size 165 x 100 cm etching on paper $2,500 - 3,500 PROVENANCE Australian Art Print Network, NSW cat No. DN138 Cooee Art Gallery, NSW Cat No. 8246 Private Collection, NSW Winner Works On Paper Prize at the 25th Telstra Indigenous Art Awards Dugal is the name of the star that is visible in the early morning sky for about two weeks during August and September. Its presence tells the Torres Strait Islanders that it is the time to harvest the wild yams, Kutai, Gabau and Saurr. It is the responsibility of the older people to look out for the star which is only visible for two to three hours each morning. By the time the yams are ready to harvest the monsoons have passed and much of the vegetation has died off. Finding the yams in the ground is a time consuming and onerous task. They are located by tracing the vines that are now dead and entwined and tangled with other vines and vegetation in trees they have climbed up, several metres away from the yam tuber. Once the yams are located and dug up the islanders are rewarded with a resource they have enjoyed for centuries and one that has sustained and provided them with a food that is very low in saturated fat and cholesterol and an excellent source of dietary fibre, Vitamin C, Potassium and Manganese.

Dugal is depicted in the top left of the print shining through one of the leaves of the withered yam vine. The moon which is also present at this time is shown as the faded circle to the right of Dugal, also shining through the vine and leaves.

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LOT #26 Maggie Watson Napangardi (1921 - 2004) Karntakurlangu Jukurrpa (Women Dreaming), 1993 54 x 47cm synthetic polymer on Belgian linen $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Private Collection, SA Lawson Menzies Auction November 2004, Lot 135 Private Collection, UK Accompanied by 3 photographs of the artist working on the painting and 3 of her with the artwork Maggie Watson was a leader amongst 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.

The country associated with this painting is Mina Mina, a place far west of Yuendumu, significant to Napangardi and Napanangka women who are the custodians of the Jukurrpa that created the area. The Dreaming describes the journey of a group of women of all ages who travelled east gathering food, collecting Ngalyipi (Tinospora smilacina or snake vine) and performing ceremonies as they travelled.

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LOT #27 Paddy Tjapaltjarri Sims (c.1925 - 2010) Witi Jukurrpa (Ceremonial Poles) - Yanjirlypirri, 2006 152 x 107 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $10,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Warlukurlangu Artists, NT Cat No. 2326/06 Cooee Art Gallery, NSW Cat No. 7066 Adrian and Anne Newstead Collection, NSW This painting shows the story of the Witi Jukurrpa (Ceremonial poles). Japaljarri and Jungarrayi men travelled from Kurlurngalinypa (near Lajamanu) to Yanjirlypirri (west of Yuendumu) and then on to Lake Mackay near the West Australian border. On the way they performed Kurdiji (initiation ceremonies) for young men. Women also danced for the Kurdiji ceremony. The site depicted in this canvas is Yanjilypiri where there is a low hill and a water soakage. The importance of this place cannot be overemphasised, as young boys are taken there to be initiated from as far away as Pitjanjatjara country to the south and Lajamanu to the north. The men wear Jinjirla (white feathers headdresses) on either side of their heads. They also wear wooden carvings of stars (Yanjilypiri) which are also laid out on the ground as part of the sand paintings produced for the ceremonies. Their bodies are painted with white and black circles, also representing Yanjilypiri. Ngalyipi (snake vine) is used to tie the Witi poles vertically to the legs of the dancing initiates. The Witi poles are shown as long straight lines and the white circles depict Yanjilypiri. The “U� shapes represent Jungarrayi and Japaljarri men, who, along with their Nungarrayi and Napaljarri classificatory sisters, are the Kirda (custodians) for this Jukurrpa.

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LOT #28 Tiger Palpatja (c.1920 - 2014) Wanampi Story, 2007 122 x 197cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $6,000 - 8000 PROVENANCE Tjala Arts, Amata, SA Cat No. TJA-7-0715 Birrung Gallery, NSW Cat No. 405-07 Cooinda Gallery, Coffs Harbour, NSW Private Collection, USA Though he began painting at the late age of 85, Tiger Palpatja’s colourful, lively compositions immediately attracted acclaim from the art world. His use of primary colours with softer pinks and greens reflect the austere power of his red desert country that is threaded through with sudden oases of breathtaking beauty. The Wanampi water snake (the main focus of his work,) created this country and is believed to be the ancestor of the Pitjantjatjara people. The non-poisonous snake lives in the Piltati waterholes, found in the lower hills of the Mann Ranges, South Australia, close to where Tiger was born and where he spent his early years, living a traditional nomadic life with his family.

Tiger was a traditional healer (ngangkari) and ceremonial leader as well as a carver of objects and spears. In his later years he moved further towards his home country, and this saw a further freeing up of his style. His painterly flair revelled in the physicality of paint texture and the vibrant effects of colour against colour.

He was a senior custodian for the Wanampi creation story, which was central to his identity and still instructs people in the reciprocal relationship between men and women. The story tells of the frustration between two brothers and their wives. The men were spending too much time on their ceremonial activities so the women stopped providing food for them. The men then tricked the women by turning themselves into snakes and leaving enticing snake trails nearby which prompted the women to start digging vigorously and deeply, after the food. When one sister eventually speared a snake, the injured and angered men swallowed the women whole and retreated forever into the holes, channels and gullies that the women had dug throughout the country.

Through his vibrant paintings Tiger offers us a window into the soul of the earth, forged from his own song cycles and feel for the land.

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LOT #29 Rammey Ramsey (1935 - ) Rocky Bar (Warlawoon Country), 2010 83.5 x 125.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on plywood $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Warmun Art Centre, WA Cat No. WAC2010 Aboriginal Benefits Foundation Fundraising Auction, Sydney NSW, 13 November 2011, lot W6.

Private Collection, NSW Rammey began painting for Jirrawun Arts in 2000 and later joined the artists working at the Warmun Art Centre where this work was created in 2010 to raise funds following the devastating flood through the community that destroyed much of the art centre stock and equipment. Here, the flood picks up and mixes with the fine red ‘pindan’ dust colouring the floodwater pink.

Ramsey paints the hills and gorges surrounding Elgee Cliffs, home to the Rock Wallabies that live around camping areas and near waterholes. Images of cliffs, hills, rocks, waterholes, and meeting places appear as distillations of prominent features in this landscape. A circle may be a waterhole, a place or a cave, a rectangle a stockyard or hills. He conveys this language of floodwater, natural and man made elements by mixing two colours, wet on wet, across the surface of the board to create the gestural strokes and rhythm of the brush – spiritually a way to represent earth, wind, fire and water.

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LOT #30 Freddie Timms (1946 - 2017) My Country, 1996 120 x 239 cm casein paint on composition board $18,000 - 22,000 PROVENANCE Kimberley Art, VIC Private Collection, VIC Fireworks Gallery, QLD Lawson~Menzies (now trading as Menzies), Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 22/11/2006, Lot No. 55A Private Collection, VIC One of five panels painted as a series. Sold with original gallery documentation on the entire suite of works.

EXHIBITED Master Works Touring Exhibition, Lawson~Menzies (now trading as Menzies) ‘Big Country small worlds’ Group Exhibition at Fireworks Gallery, Qld 2006 Freddy was born at Police Hole in 1946 and followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming 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 lasting influence on him. In 1985, he retired from the physically demanding stockman’s life and settled at the new community established at Warmun, where he worked as a gardener at the Argyle Mine. He eventually moved out to Frog Hollow with his wife Berylene Mung and their four children, taking a job as an environmental health worker and assuming responsibility for the general maintenance of the small community.

He began painting during the 1990s and in a career that spanned more than 20 years, Timms became known for aerial map-like visions of country that are less concerned with ancestral associations as with tracing the responses and refuges of the Gidja people as they encountered the ruthlessness and brutality of colonisation. However, his political nature is characterised by more intimate interpretations of the experience rather than overtly political statements. In what first appeared as a new and beautiful sense of irregular geometry, soft yet boldly defined blocks of colour depicted the area that now lay beneath water. There had been no consultation with the traditional Gidja owners. The places where he and his countrymen used to walk and camp, along with all its ancestral burial grounds and sacred places, were simply buried beneath the rising waters.

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LOT #31 Jarinyanu David Downs (1925 - 1995) Untitled - Wakaya Ceremony, c.1983 119 x 120 cm natural earth pigments and synthetic polymer paint on composition board $25,000 - 35,000 PROVENANCE Emerald Hill Gallery, VIC Private Collection, VIC Sotheby’s, Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 31/10/2006, Lot No. 42 Private Collection, USA Jarinyanu David Downs was born in the Great Sandy Desert in the 1920s and moved from his traditional lands to the cattle stations in the 1940s. He returned and settled in the Kimberley region in the north west of Australia late in life. Though he first began working as an artist decorating artefacts, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that he began painting on ceremonial boards in traditional ochres and natural resins and subsequently acrylic on canvas.

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This board is believed to be one of his earliest works. It depicts a ceremony that involves both men and women that even children are permitted to view. The central horizontal form represents a windbrake of bushes called Kanala or Wuri, that emphasises the separate role of the musicians who tap boomerangs to create the rhythm and sing the story. Two kinds of boomerang are employed: Jarungarr - the curved, returning boomerang used in combat, and Waraka - less curved, non-returning weapons used for hunting kangaroos. The dancing men wear elaborate bodypaint which also covers the tall headdress topped with Ngaliwili constructions made of tightly bound cockatoo feathers. The dancers are also wearing pubic pendants of string, leather, or pearl shell which covers their loins.

LOT #32 Artist Once Known Queensland Rainforest shield, circa early 20th century 94 x 38 cm natural earth pigments on fig wood $15,000 - 20,000 PROVENANCE Ex Gumbuya Park Museum, VIC Private Collection, NSW Private Collection, VIC In duelling as well as in other fighting, rainforest men used large wooden shields as protection against the blows of heavy wooden swords. The shields were of the soft corky wood of the wild fig (Ficus sp.) and were carved from slabs cut out of the buttress roots of these trees. The shields were light in weight and absorbed the sword’s blows. While pieces were sometimes cut off in the process, the complex grain of the buttress wood prevented a heavy blow from splitting the shield completely, as would happen with normally grained timber. A boss was carved on the face of the shield to protect the hand grip hollowed out behind. The shield also provided protection against spears, and shields in museum collections sometimes show spear tips embedded in them.

The polychrome designs on the shields were bold and geometric in form, relying on reds, yellows, white and back, as did the designs on baskets, boomerangs and other surfaces.The shield designs, however, were symbolic of totem creatures and were individual to the owner.* * In Australians to 1788, Chapter 8, Challenge and Response in the Rainforest, Barrie Reynolds

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LOT #33 Artists Once Known Four Southeast Australian Clubs, c.1900 Height: 73cm, 70cm, 65cm, 67cm carved wood $7,000 - 9,000 PROVENANCE 1. Private Collection, NSW 2. Private Collection, UK Duggleby auction house Scarborough, UK Private Collection, NSW 3. Private Collection, NSW 4. Private Collection, NSW Cf. For related examples see; Carol Cooper et al, Aboriginal Australia, Australian Gallery Directors Council, Sydney, p. 93, S67 and S68 indicating that these forms of club probably come from the Murray River region in New South Wales.

Four individually mounted biconical headed clubs collected in the Murray River region in the late 18th or early 19th century.

Used for hand to hand combat in conjunction with a parrying shield.Aboriginal clubs come in many different forms depending on the region and tribe. These lovely examples are old, rare and in excellent condition. Their clean forms and well shaped heads impart a functional beauty.

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LOT #34 Artists Once Known Six Southeast Spear Throwers carved wood $15,000 - 18,000 PROVENANCE 1. Bega Museum, NSW Cat No. X2405 No.1. H 38 cm : 46 cm on base Private Collection NSW 2. Bonhams and Goodman, Sydney, 2005 No.2. H 50 cm : 57 cm on base Private Collection NSW 3. Sotheby’s, Sydney, 2011 No.3. H 56 cm : 64 cm on base Private Collection NSW 4. Holt Collection Cat No. H678 No.4. H 67 cm : 76 cm on base Caspian Gallery (Bill Evans) , NSW Private Collection, NSW 5. Private Collection, UK No.5. H 70 cm : 77 cm on base Bonhams UK Oxford 2012 6. Private Collection NSW No.6. H 83 cm : 90 cm on base Cf. For related examples see; Carol Cooper et al, Aboriginal Australia, Australian Gallery Directors Council, Sydney, S96 - S109, pp. 100 - 102 Six rare south east NSW spear throwers thought to have been collected on the Lower Murray River and coastal NSW. These long narrow leaf shaped woomeras include one example with a possible bush repaired barb bound to the shaft with natural resin (No.3) and five others with solid hooks and shafts carved in one single piece. One with incised grid pattern on upper side (No.3); one with deeply incised dot and chevron pattern on back (No.4); one with irregular snake pattern front and back (No.5); the largest with beautiful serregated edges and bulbous shape on handle (No.6). Two bear museum/collection codes (No.s 1 and 4). Each individual piece has been mounted separately to form a set.

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LOT #35 Rover Joolama Thomas (1926 - 1998) Rainbow Jowie - Lake Billiluna, 1995 205 x 101 cm natural earth pigments on Belgian linen $50,000 - 60,000 PROVENANCE Neil McLeod Fine Arts Studio, VIC Cat no. KA116.

Private Collection, VIC Sold with original source documentation and two photos of the artist creating the work, a certificate of authenticity from Antiquities Conservation, and additional material relating to the provenance of the work.

Rover Thomas lived a traditional bush life with his family at Well 33 until he moved, at 10 years of age, with his family to Billiluna Station, where he was initiated, after his mother’s death. 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 including Bow River Station, where he was married for the first time, and later at Texas Downs, Old Lissadell and Mabel Downs, adjacent to the Warmun community at Turkey Creek, where he settled in his later years.

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In this work Rover depicts Lake Billiluna (red oxide) located in the Western Desert near Gordon Downs (Kundart Djaru) close to the border of Western Australia and the Northern Territory. The Lake is a breeding ground for budgerigars and a significant site being the home of the Billiluna Rainbow Jowie. At this site a mythical dog (dingo) killed emus. They had a big fight and the emus now lie in the middle of the lake having left behind sacred objects on their travels. In relating this story the artist indicated that the Jowie (Rainbow Serpent) lived in the lake in the area to the extreme right of the paining. He travels only in the absence of strong wind, to avoid being blown away thereby losing his home in the bottom of the lake. The black areas around the lake represent hills. The Jowie originally gave all the languages and site names for this region. All wind and rain emanates from and is connected to the Jowie. This important work was commissioned from the artist and painted during his trip to Melbourne in 1995.

LOT #36 Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri (1936 - 1984) Women’s Love Magic, 1975 126 x 83 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $8,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. TL75029 Private Collection, Alice Springs NT accompanied by a copy of the original art centre certificate Tim Leura was steeped in ancient lore and, despite his initial reservations, he became one of the four founding members of the Western Desert art movement. He became invaluable to Geoffrey Bardon as friend, assistant, and interpreter. A man of whom Bardon wrote ‘he is my dearest and closest friend in the Western Desert’. While today Clifford Possum is the better known of the two ‘brothers’, Tim Leura is recognised as having been Possum’s spiritual mentor and instrumental in the development of Possum’s talent and technique.

This is a representation of a very special activity undertaken by single women. The women (sisters) here are possum ancestors at a tjililipa tjila, a single women’s camp, at Lookura, west of Napperby Station.

The central concentric circles are painted on the women’s breasts, the two arcs are painted around her breasts, and the two longer arcs painted from her ribs to her hips. The special decoration is applied to accompany a song and dance that the women have been taught in order to attract a man. The display is made whilst eligible men are in view. Utensils accompany the design, the mani mani stick defining one of the women’s functions in hooking fruit from trees.* * Story recorded by Janet Wilson, art adviser at Papunya Tula in 1975.

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LOT #37 Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910 - 1996) Yam Dreaming , 1995 91 x 121.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on linen $35,000 - 45,000 PROVENANCE Robert Steel Gallery, NY, USA Cat No. IFT-EK47 Private Collection, USA Cf. For stylistically similar works see: ‘Wild Yam I, 1995’ in Janet Holt (et. al. ), ‘Emily Kngwarreye Paintings, Craftsman House, 1998, plate 70 illus. pp 166-167 and various other works pp 168-180, and the cover image of the Retrospective catalogue ‘Emily Kngwarreye, Alhalkere Paintingss from Utopia, Margo Neale (ed), Queensland Art Gallery, 1998 The subject of this work is Arlatyeye, the Pencil Yam or Bush Potato. This is a valuable food source and the subject of important songs, dances and ceremonies amongst Eastern Anmatjerre people. It was the subject of a great number of Emily Kngwarreye’s paintings, which were created, most familiarly, in a vast array of vibrant colours. In this painting however, Emily has characterised the roots of the yam in the plant’s full period of maturity. As the foliage dies off, cracks appear in the ground, which trace the root system, and indicate that the engorged tubers are ready to be dug up and eaten. Solid lines, stark and unadorned, trace the meandering paths of the pencil yam roots as they forge their way through the desert sands. Arguably the most important of these works is the monumental Big Yam Dreaming 1995 (8 x 3m) in the National Gallery of Victoria. Painted entirely in white on a black ground, it has been described as the ‘perfect bridge between Aboriginal art and contemporary international art’.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye was born at Anilitye (Boundary Bore) and began paintings on canvas when in her late 70s. She was awarded the Australian Creative Fellowship in 1992 and continued painting prolifically until her death in 1996.

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LOT #38 Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa (1920 - 1989) Rainbow Storm Dreaming, 1971 47 x 65 cm poster paint with PVA glue on composition board $14,000 - 18,000 PROVENANCE Created in Papunya, NT 1971 Private Collection, QLD Accompanied by a positive assessment of authentication prepared by Antiquities Conservation P/L following detailed examination and analysis.

Cf. for an almost identical work created at the same time see Rainbow Storm Dreaming Version 1, in Geoffrey Bardon and James Bardon Papunya, A Place Made After the Story, The Beginings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2004, p 199.

According to Geoffrey Bardon, this painting is an interesting formalisation of the component elements of the Water Dreaming that include men in caves, rain, clouds, rainbow, running water, waterholes and underground water. Kaapa persistently integrated body decoration motifs of the Ceremonial Man into his paintings on hardboard.

The undulating lines represent falling rain, the two U shapes the Water Dreaming Ceremonial Men sitting at the Dreaming site, Mikanji, near Mount Dennison, which is shown by the large concentric oval with radiating lines. The other ovals and concentric circles represent waterholes and are associated with both sand painting and body decoration. The intensive overall patterning and waves show the heavy rain that splashes onto the sand and flows across the land surface into rivers that will run further into the desert, to soak underground. The two Water Ceremonial Men have power and custody of these rockholes and the underground water that is found by digging; the dark spiralling line across the centre of the painting is the rainbow after the storm.

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LOT #39 Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri (c.1936 - 1984) Love Story, 1979 95 x 170 cm synthetic polymer paint on cotton duck $30,000 - 40,000 PROVENANCE Holmes a Court Collection, Heytesbury Holdings, WA Private Collection, USA Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 24/06/2002, Lot No. 110 Cf. Paintings on the same theme by artist’s brother Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri include man’s Love Story, 1978 in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia (see Johnson V, The Art of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, G + B International, 1994 Pl.21 p75 and Ngarlu Love Story, 1991 (Johnson, 1994 pl.55 p 128 - Lot 49 in this sale) This painting depicts another aspect of the Love Story that became Possum’s leitmotif. It is a tale of incestuous lust and the magical spells cast by an old Tjungurrayi man in order to seduce a woman of the wrong skin. To achieve his elicit end he uses sacred songs and a hairstring spindle that he made from his own hair and a pair of thin sticks. Overcome by lust he drops the hair string that he is braiding and it scatters like love on the wind. A whirlwind blows in an attempt to destroy his love magic but it is to no avail. He takes the woman for his own. It is an indiscretion for which he will be eventually punished.

Leura was steeped in ancient lore and, despite his initial reservations, he became one of the four founding members of the Western Desert art movement. He became invaluable to Geoffrey Bardon as friend, assistant, and interpreter. A man of whom Bardon wrote ‘he is my dearest and closest friend in the Western Desert’. While today Clifford Possum is the better known of the two ‘brothers’, Tim Leura is recognised as having been Possum’s spiritual mentor and instrumental in the development of Possum’s talent and technique.

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Image | Tim Leura - Photo credit: Papunja: A Place Made After a Story

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LOT #40 Ena Nungurayai Gimme (1953 - 1992) Artist’s Mother’s Country, 1991 100 x 75 cm synthetic polymer paint on cavnas $5,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Warlayiriti Art, Balgo Hills WA Cat No. 634/91 Private Collection, Spain Private Collection, USA Accompanied by its original certificate of authenticity from Warlayirti Artists WA EXHIBITED Lawson~Menzies, Fine Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 31/05/2005, Lot No. 26 Duran Arte y Subastas, Spain, Lot. No. 154 Ena Gimme began painting for Warlayirti Artists in 1989. She was the eldest daughter of Eubena Nampitjin and, because of the strong influence of her mother, her artistic expression more closely followed the developments of the older female painters. This was in part also due to the fact that she did not leave her traditional lands on the Canning Stock Route until she was mature in age.

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The circular motifs in her paintings centered upon two waterholes from her mother country, surrounded by a grove of trees. This painting shows one of these important waterholes which generations of the artist’s family camped at. In the surrounding bush there is always plentiful supplies of the ‘ngungun’ fruit which is collected by the women. The rocks shown have associations with Dreamtime creation stories passed down in law and ceremony.

LOT #41 Dorothy Napangardi Sandhills, 2004 152 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $30,000 - 40,000 PROVENANCE Gallery Gondwana, NT Cat No. DN8577 Cooee Gallery, NSW Cat No. 11144 Private Collection, NSW EXHIBITED Cooee Art at Australian Galleries, Sydney, April 2016 (and associated catalogue) Regarded as one of the leading artists of the contemporary Aboriginal Art movement, Dorothy Napangardi creating her own unique language to describe her homelands. This work captures the rolling sandhills in her father’s country at Lake McKay. Dorothy’s network 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 and in the following year a solo exhibition of her work was curated for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

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LOT #42 Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri (c.1936 - 1984) Untitled (Rainmaker Bird Ceremony), 1972 91.5 x 60.5 cm (irregular) powder pigment on composition board $80,000 - 100,000 PROVENANCE Painted at Papunya, NT in early 1972 Sotheby’s, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 24/06/2002, Lot No. 75 Private Collection, USA Purchased directly from the artist by Mr. Keith Smith a patrol officer with the Northern Territory Administration in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Bears original owner’s name verso.

ILLISTRATED Cf. For a related work with similar imagery created by Leura’s clan brother during the same period see The Art of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri by Vivien Johnson, 1994 Craftsman House, plate 3.

Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri was the close cousin brother of Clifford Possum. They grew up in the same house hold under the sharp eye of Tim’s father, One Pound Jimmy Tjungarrayi and shared the country around Mount Allan and Napperby Cattle Stations. Both men were highly educated in the tribal customs and rituals of the region and when Geoff Bardon started buying painting from the senior lawmen in Papunya, both men realised an opportunity.

Tim Leura painted this large ( 91.5x 60 cm) masonite board in “early 1972”. It was collected by Northern Territory Administration Patrol Officer Keith Smith and referred to as Rainmaker Bird Ceremony. It is the prototype for brother Clifford’s Emu Coroboree Man, painted in February 1972, his first painting done in the Papunya shed specifically for Bardon.

There are many other examples to confirm that Tim Leura often created motifs, compositions and graphic elements that Clifford in turn used in his own work. Leura taking on the role of creative director and Possum following up with a stronger and more conceptual graphic representation. Comparing the two paintings, the similarities of the dancing figure are obvious. The body paint elements are identical as are the pubic feather belt , the behind the back emu tjurunga and similar emu feather capped headdresses. The emu nests are also displayed, the male emu is the guardian and protector of the eggs on the nest and the birds kneeling position is indicated in both pictures.

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LOT #43 Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910 - 1996) Awelye - Food Travels Dreaming, 1995 120 x 90 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $20,000 - 30,000 PROVENANCE Commissioned by Helen Loveridge, Outback Alive ACT, 1995 Cat No. OA665 Private Collection QLD Pirra Fine Arts, VIC Private Collection, QLD Accompanied by original certificate of authenticity from Outback Alive and a certificate from Pirra Fine Arts.

This is a most unusual late career work by Emily Kngwarreye. Stylistically it resonates far more closely with works created by the artist 5 years earlier at the beginning of her 7-year painting career. Yet Emily was never averse to painting works in an earlier style if commissioned to do so. Here she returns to the tracks followed by her ancestors, and indeed her clan’s women as they traversed the country looking for bush tucker.

The original certificate supplied with the painting reads as follows: The background colours in this painting depict the bush food collected by women in the Utopia region of the Northern Territory.

The white lines represent the travels made by the women whilst finding and collecting these foods to take back to camp. The foods represented in this painting are: Wild Orange, Uparli (Bush Banana), Wild Plum and Sultana. The dark smudging colour in the background is Sugar Bag. This is a wild honey which seeps out of the trunk of the Mulgoa tree.

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LOT #44 John Mawurndjul (1952 - ) Mardayin at Dilebang, 2008 130 x 52 cm natural earth pigments on Eucalyptus bark $12,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Maningrida Arts and Culture, NT Cat No. 1239-08 Private Collection, NSW LITTERATURE Cf. For an image of the artist painting a very similar work see Rarrk: John Mawurndjul, Journey Through Time in Northern Australia, Museum Tinguely, Basel, 2005, p. 42 Born at Mumeka, located near the Mann River in Central Arnhem Land, an important site for the Kurulk clan, John Mawurndjurl was taught to paint by his elder brother Jimmy Njiminjuma and his uncle Peter Marralwanga. Today he guides the development of his children and his niece Irenie Ngalinba, Jimmy Njiminjuma’s daughter.

Originally painting mythological figures such as the Ngalyod the Rainbow serpent and totemic creatures, he later developed a more abstract style with many grid forms interlocking over the entire surface, as depicted in Mardayin Design, where the complex composition of Mawurndjul’s intricate rarrk skills is evident.

In this work Mawurndjul has depicted the design associated with Mardayin at Milmilngkan where the Rainbow Serpent(Ngalyod) resides under the water in the billabong. Ngalyod is recognised in Kuninjku cosmology as the creator of all of their sacred sites imbued with powerful spirit (Djang). Ngalyod has the powers of creation and destruction and is associated with rain, monsoon seasons and rainbows which are manifestations of his power and presence, and consequently, fertility and abundance.

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LOT #45 Ronnie Tjampitjinpa (c.1943 - ) Tingari Dreaming - Nyinaraguminya Swamp, 2002 137 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. RT0209107 Private Collection, VIC 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. He won the Alice Springs Art Prize in 1988 and this was followed by successive solo exhibitions at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in 1989 and 1990. From the early 1990s he initiated the new optical style adopted by several male Pintupi artists. In doing so he and his male contemporaries returned to the sacred men’s key designs engraved on ceremonial weapons and artefacts. More than any other figure, he can be credited with having forged this new artistic direction that embraced aesthetic minimalism, thereby freeing up further possibilities for the younger upcoming generation of painters, and challenging fixed perceptions of Western Desert art.

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The Tingari are a group of mythical ancestors of the Dreaming who travelled over vast stretches of the country performing rituals while creating and shaping particular sites. The repeated concentric oblong patterns represent the sites where the Tingari men stopped during their travels. These mythologies form part of men’s law that is passed on to initiates during ceremony.

LOT #46 Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910 - 1996) My Country, 1994 124 x 180 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $40,000 - 60,000 PROVENANCE Commissioned by Patrick Corbally Stourton Cat No. EKK1257 Private Collection, NSW EXHIBITED Australian Painting, New Works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Corbally Stourton Contemporary Art, Cork Street, London, 1995 By 1992 Emily’s fine dotting and symbolic underpainting gave way to works in which symbols and tracks were increasingly concealed beneath a sea of dots until eventually they were no longer evident at all. She began using larger brushes to create lines of dots that ran across vibrantly coloured, haptic surfaces. These works became progressively visually abstracted and ethereal.

By the time this painting was created in 1994 Emily had developed a style employing larger and larger brushes. With prodigious energy she now created wildly colourful canvases by double dipping brushes into pots of layered paint thereby creating floral impressions with alternately coloured variegated outlines. Despite her age (84 at this time), Emily’s physicality was evident as she painted. Often with a brush in each hand she simultaneously pounded them down on to the canvas spreading the bristles and leaving the coagulating paint around the neck of the brush to create depth and form.

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LOT #47 Maggie Watson Napangardi (1921 - 2004) Mina Mina, 1997 151 x 78 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $20,000 - 30,000 PROVENANCE Ngintaka Arts, NT Kimberley Art, Melbourne VIC Lawson~Menzies, Aboriginal Art, Sydney, Nov 2006, Lot No. 72 Private Collection, USA Maggie Watson began painting at 60 years of age and became the senior female artist at Yuendumu by the time of her death in 2004.

Though she created paintings for 15 years and was never a prolific artist, she was a leader amongst 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 was 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 and Ngalyipi (Tinospora smilacina or snake vine) they used 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, then 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 and 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 are regarded as 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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Maggie Watson’s paintings are characterised by the linear precision created by dots applied in alternating bands of colour. When viewed in varying arrays across the canvas these meticulously applied textured striations impart a rhythmic trancelike quality thereby evoking the movement of lines of women as they dance, and their repeated chanting during ceremony.

LOT #48 Kathleen Petyarre (1940 - ) Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming, 2006 137 x 137 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $12,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Galerie Australis, SA Cat No. GAKP0906498 Cooee Art Gallery, NSW The Lowensteins Art Collection, Vic Cooee Art Gallery, NSW EXHIBITED Utopia and Beyond, January 2007, Avalon Recreation Centre, Cooee Art 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, 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 moving each grain of sand, grain by grain, since the dawn of time. Petyarre and her clanswomen believe that they are its descendants, and have therefore inherited the responsibility for caring 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. At the centre of this painting is a sacred Women’s Dreaming site associated with the green pea (antweth). Depicted throughout the painting are seeds (ntang) of the pea, which are an important food for the “traditional healer” (ngangkar), and the Mountain Devil Lizard (Arnkerrth).

The elongated X-shape represents two of the artist’s Mountain Ancestors Dreaming paths.

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LOT #49 Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (1932 - 2002) Love Story at Ngarlu, 1991 152.5 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $80,000 - 120,000 PROVENANCE Painted at Warrandyte Victoria, 1991 Acquired from the artist in 1992 by Peter Los, Western Desert Aboriginal Art Accompanied by a certificate from Western Desert Aboriginal Art P/L Cat No. POLPCP44 LITERATURE Cf. Vivien Johnson, The Art of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Gordon and Breach Arts International, 1994 Plate 58, page 131 and for a detailed explanation of the iconography p169. Also notes on Plates 4 and 21, and Chapter 3 pp 42-46 for a detailed account of the Ngarlu Love Story.

This is the tale of incestuous lust and the magical spells cast by an old Tjungurrayi man called Lintipilinti in order to seduce a woman of the wrong skin. To achieve this elicit end Lintipilinti uses sacred songs and a hairstring spindle that he made from his own hair and a pair of thin sticks. The man is depicted as a large U shape with a club that he carries beside him. The club has multiple meanings in the sacred version of this mythology, yet even in the public version it is menacing enough. The object of his desire is a wrong skinned Napangardi woman who is travelling from Yuelamu (Mount Allen) looking for the native sugar that is found in abundance on Eucalyptus leaves where it is deposited by small flying ants. The woman does not realise until too late that she is being stalked by the Tungurrayi who is telepathically calling her to him while using ritual paraphenalia and a sacred ground painting. Overcome by lust the Tjugurrayai man drops the hair string that he is braiding and it scatters like love on the wind. A whirlwind blows in an attempt to destroy his love magic but it is to no avail. Though she is a strictly forbidden sexual partner Lintipilinti shows no concern. Eventually he will be punished at another place for this indiscretion. But this part of the narrative takes place at Ngarlu (Red Hill) where a small oval shaped rockhole water source is found. If prospective lovers drink from the well it is said to have a powerful effect upon them.

In this painting Clifford Possum uses a technique which he called ‘straight line’ dotting. Possum also includes some of the bush foods the Napangati woman was collecting when the Tjungurrayi man saw her and was smitten with desire. Various seed pods (fish like shapes) and Mulga seed stands can be discerned in the luxuriant country around the site. The necklace used by Nungurrayi women in the ceremony and the hunting boomerang and fighting stick of the Tjungurrayi man are shown along with his white footprints.

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LOT #50 Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910 - 1996) Untitled - Anooralya Yam Dreaming, 1994 91.5 x 121.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $25,000 - 35,000 PROVENANCE Delmore Gallery, NT Cat No. 94A023 Private Collection, NT LITERATURE Cf. For a stylistically similar work see Emily Kngwarreye Paintings, Craftsman House & G+ B Arts International, 1998 pp 117-121, Plates 46-50 Reflected in this work is the Anooralya Yam, the most important plant in Emily’s custodianship. This hardy and fertile plant provides both a tuber vegetable and a seed bearing flower called Kame (Emily’s tribal name). As the plant dies off above the ground, the yam tuber can be found where cracks in the earth’s surface indicates its presence underground.

The application of red and yellow colours, highlights the varied and changing hues in the life cycle of the Anooralya Yam and other food plants found near Alalgura on Utopia Station, west of Delmore Downs. From an aerial perspective we see sporadic clustered growth after summer rain.

We also look on this exciting work as a water catchment area. The rain falls and water slowly flows along the broad shallow watercourse and replenishes the soakage at Alalgura. The flourish of growth that follows is exceptional and rapid.

Ceremony reinforces through the verses of the song cycle, the significance of this knowledge. In particular, it teaches survival, basic social codes and obligations.

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Image | Emily Kame Kngwarreye - Photo credit: Tara Ebes

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LOT #51 Paddy Bedford (1922 - 2007) Untitled, 1998 122 x 136 cm ochres and pigment with acrylic binder on Belgian linen $30,000 - 40,000 PROVENANCE Jirrawun Aboriginal Arts Corporation, Kununurra WA Cat No. PB 98-13 Private Collection, QLD Private Collection, VIC ILLISTRATED Storer, R., Paddy Bedford, Museum, of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2006, p. 144 (illus.) PB 98-13 Though he had been involved with ceremonial painting all his life, it was by chance that a gallery dealer happened upon some of Paddy Bedford’s boards in a rubbish tip in the mid 1990s. From such humble beginnings Paddy began painting formally in 1997, upon the formation of Jirrawun Aboriginal Arts.

Characteristic of his painting style are richly ochred surfaces with minimal arrangements of circular shapes delineated by white dots.

Though important Dreamings such as the Emu, Turkey, and Cockatoo are present in many of his works, like the narratives of his family history they are not depicted in any figurative form.

Paddy Bedford, an enigmatic octogenarian, stood out as a uniquely talented artist. He was amongst the few selected to contribute to the permanent installation at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris and was honoured, during his lifetime, with the unprecedented recognition of a retrospective exhibition and a major catalogue by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney during 2007, which toured nationally.

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LOT #52 Mick Tjapaltjarri Namarari (C.1926 - 1998) Marnpi Rockhole, 1995 102 x 152 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Warumpi Arts, NT Cat No. MN5/95 Kimberley Art, Melbourne Cat No. KA00367 Accompanied by Kimberley Australian Aboriginal Art certificate Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri was born during the 1920s at Marnpi, an isolated desert rockhole in Pintupi country in the south western corner of the Northern Territory. He was a trusted keeper of the stories and the sites culturally affiliated with that special place.

During a career that spanned almost three decades he became a towering presence whose variety of subjects and diversity of stylistic approaches kept him at the forefront of Western Desert painting. Geoff Bardon noted his ability as a painter from the earliest days of the movement. Much later, he was to play a quiet but decisive role in instigating the Papunya Tula art movement’s increasing ethereal minimalism of the late 1980s and 1990s. In doing so he significantly fueled the international reputation of Australian Aboriginal art, thereby earning himself an incomparable place in Australian art history.

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LOT #53 Yinarupa Gibson Nangala (1948 - ) Ngaminya, 2014 180 x 120 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $12,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Palya Proper Fine Art, NT Japingla Gallery, WA Cat No. JAP012901 Private Collection, NT Accompanied by a folio of 10 working photographs and source certificate.

Yinarupa Nangala is a member of an extended family deeply steeped in the history of the Western Desert art. She is the daughter of Anatjari Tjampitjinpa, one of the first Papunya artists and was married to Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi. She is related to George Ward Tjungurrayi and Willy Tjungurrayi by marriage.

Yinarupa began creating her intuitive rhythmic paintings in 1996 and developed a unique identifiable style. Her works take on a movement of their own, as the viewer’s eye shifts across the vast number of signs and markings with hundreds of shimmering dots rendered in warm, pale colours. Her classic Pintupi designs are associated with the sacred rockhole site of Mukula and other rockholes in the region south west of Jupiter Well in Western Australia. Here women collect the seeds of the native Acacia and grind them into seeds to make damper. During ancestral times a large group of women came from the west and stopped at this site to perform ceremonies associated with the area.

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LOT #54 Lily Sandover Kngwarrey (1947 - 2004) Alhwert, 2002 300 x 120 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $12,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Urapunja Artists, Utopia NT Cat No. STI-02502 Simon Turner International, QLD Utopia Women’s Collection, NSW EXHIBITED 2003 - Woolloongabba Art Gallery, QLD 2008 - Utopian Modern Women’s Collection, Coo-ee Art, NSW 2008 - Black and White, NG Art Gallery, NSW 2009 - Utopia, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, VIC 2015 - Outback to Abstract - Chiefly Plaza, Sydney, Soho Gallery and Coo-ee Art Lily Sandover Kngwarreye began painting during the 1988-9 CAAMA summer workshop following almost a decade making batik in the Utopia clan lands. The adopted ‘sister’ of Emily Kngwarreye, Lily was her closest friend and constant companion.

When painting Emily Kngwarreye and Lily Sandover were inseparable companions. Lily looked after the elder Emily closely, while painting her own works alongside. Lily painted hundreds of paintings over the years as she worked beside her friend and, right up until the last months of her life, Emily camped with Lily and their family on Delmore Downs close to her tribal country adjacent to the Delmore homestead. Together Emily and Lily would travel and live for long periods on Delmore surrounded by an extended family that at times could grow to 40 women and children.

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1.

2.

LOT #55 Jarinyanu David Downs (1925- 2005) $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Private Collection, QLD 1.

Painting of Kurtal, c.1985 45.5 x 36 cm natural earth pigments and resin on canvas board Painting of Kurtal the ancestral rain man who was born on a distant island and travelled to the Kimberley as a cyclone. As Kurtal moved further inland he created places of ‘living water’ (permanent water sources) and visited other rain men, occasionally gaining valuable items from them through trickery and magic.

2.

Ceremonial Beanwood Shield depicting dancers, c.1985 66 x 27 x 5 cm irregular natural earth pigments and resin on bean wood An ovoid bean wood shield with solid wood handle verso, depicting ceremonial dancers wearing body paint and carrying Jarungarr - curved, returning boomerangs.

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LOT #56 Timothy Cook (1958 - ) Kulama, 2016 120 x 120 cm natural earth pigments on Belgian linen $7,000 - 9,000 PROVENANCE Jilamara Arts and Crafts, NT Cat No. 40-16 Cooee Art Gallery, NSW EXHIBITED Cooee Art Gallery at Australian Galleries, April 2016, Australian Galleries Sydney (and illustrated in exhibition catalogue) Born 1958 on Melville Island, Timothy Cook began painting in the mid 1990s. At the start of his career he was one of a number of Tiwi artists who visited the South Australian Museum in Adelaide to view the bark paintings collected by anthropologist Charles Mountford during his National Geographic expedition to Melville Island in 1954. The visiting artists were inspired to create contemporary responses and Cook quickly became one of the most radical interpreters of these early Tiwi works.

The traditional Tiwi ceremony of kulama (or yam) is a recurrent subject in Cook’s work, and its circular motif has several echoes in Tiwi culture. This ceremony is a coming-of-age ritual that occurs when the kulama yams are harvested. It is performed in the early dry season around a circular fire-pit when a conspicuous halo appears around the full moon.Elders of both sexes sing and dance for three days welcoming the boys into adulthood. The boy is then renamed with his true man’s name. The moon is a potent metaphor for life and death in the Tiwi Islands. It is home to the adulterous Tapara from the Tiwi mortuary narrative of Pukumani, which also features Purukapali, his wife Waiyai, and their baby son Jinani.

Timothy Cook was a finalist in the National Aboriginal Art Awards (NATSIA) on six occasions prior to 2010, and selected as a finalist in numerous other national art prizes before winning the NATSIA in 2012. He is renowned for paintings in natural earth pigment characterised by loose, gestural, spacious designs. These are composed with pure instinct and without hesitation.

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LOT #57 Cornelia Tipuamantumirri (1930 - ) Jilamara Design, 2014 180 x 120 cm natural ochre & pigment on canvas $8,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Munupi Arts, NT Cat No. 14-211 Art Mob, TAS Cat No. 06092 Cornelia Tipuamantumirri was born on Melville Island in 1930, at the juncture of the Arafura and Timor Seas and is now one of Melville Island’s most revered elders. A gifted traditional weaver, she has full knowledge of Tiwi ceremony, body painting and feather and fibre regalia, as well as song and dance.

She paints designs from her Tiwi culture using patterning from older ceremonial art and bark paintings, or carved Pukumani poles.

Jilamara is the brightly coloured ochre patterns painted on the body for the Pukumani ceremony, in which participants’ bodies are covered in designs and sacred markings related to kin to disguise them from the spirits of the dead. These highly individuated forms drawn from a shared understanding of geometric motifs are also translated onto monumental carved tutini (burial poles) that are placed around gravesites.

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Cornelia’s stately presence at Munupi Arts is redolent of bygone Tiwi elders. She stands silently, smoking a crab claw pipe and painting slowly and confidently with a pwoja, a traditional painting comb. This implement, a flat carved stick with multiple prongs, is used to simultaneously paint rows of dots in ochre or paint. Like some of the great Tiwi artists of previous decades, her skill and aesthetic confidence are employed to represent particular Tiwi designs representing the skin of the crocodile, or the phosphorescent trail of Jarrikalani, the turtle moving through the dark sea.

LOT #58 Jimmy Mawukura (Mulgra) Nerrimah (1924 - 2013) Jilji (sandhill) country the Great Sandy Desert. , 2006 80 x 100 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Mangkaja Arts, WA Cat No. PC053/06 Harvison Gallery, WA Private Collection, WA Jimmy Nerrimah’s country was Wayampajarti, a jila (permanent waterhole) in the north western area of the Great Sandy Desert. He was born 500 km south east of Derby, went through the law as a young man 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 and lived in the desert, moving around totally reliant on these. He finally left the bush in his 60s and worked for a time at Nerrimah Station where he got his ‘white fella’ name. He moved to live out his final years at Looma, an outstation in the west Kimberley near Derby.

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LOT #59 Jimmy Baker (1915 - 2010) Kanpiku Tjukupa, 2008 92.5 x 90 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $4,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Maruku Arts, NT Cat No. 3924 Private Collection, NSW Jimmy Baker was a senior Pitjantjatjara man who lived at Kanpi an outstation on the APY lands in the north of South Australia. He was renowned as a Ngankari or traditional healer and highly skilled carver of men’s traditional implements before becoming a painter.

This work is about the Emus ancestors of his country at Kanpi. The Emu was Jimmy’s totem animal. They travelled a long way to get to this site where they drank their fill before moving on. Here they ate mistletoe berries and other berries, caterpillars, and native cress.

In this painting Jimmy shows the camps of the Emu and the waterholes they visited along with their travelling tracks. Kanpi is also an important site of the Piltati Dreaming which relates the story of two couples who turn into Water Serpents.

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LOT #60 Naata Nungurrayi (1932 - ) Ceremony at Marapinti, 2002 93 x 154 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $10,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Ngintaka Arts, NT Flinders Lane Gallery, Vic Cat No. FG022022.NN Private Collection, NSW Lawson~Menzies, Australian Aboriginal Art, Sydney, 14/11/2007, Lot No. 17 Private Collection, QLD Sold with original gallery documentation and a folio of 11 photographs of the artist creating the work.

Naata Nungurrayi was about 30 years of age when she encountered the welfare patrol in 1963 and was brought with her family to Papunya the flowing year. Forced to leave behind her beloved desert homelands, the memory of these places and the life she led there provided the inspiration and the subject matter for her highly sought after paintings. She began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1996.

Naata’s paintings combine the carefully composed geometric style that developed at Papunya amongst the Pintupi painting men, with the looser technique and more painterly organic style introduced by the women after the paintings camps of the early and mid 1990s.

This work depicts designs associated with the rockhole and soakage water site of Marrapinti, to the west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia. The lines are sandhills surrounding the area and the roundels represent rockholes. A large group of senior women camped at this rockhole. They are depicted in this painting as U shapes sitting in groups while camped. The myth relating to these women tells of how they first made the nose-bones which are traditionally worn through a hole in the nose web. These nose-bones were originally worn by both men and women but are now only worn by the older generation on ceremonial occasions.

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LOT #61 Willy Tjungurrayi (C.1932 - 2008) Tingari at Kaakuratintja, 2003 153 x 185 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $10,000 - 12,000 PROVENANCE Kimberley Art, VIC Cat No. KA983/03 Private Collection, VIC Willy Tjungurrayi grew up in the bush living a traditional life and was brought with his family to Haasts Bluff in the late 1950s when he was a young man. He moved to Papunya where he started painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1976. In the 1980s he emerged as one of the senior Pintupi painters along with his younger brother Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungarrayi, and older brother George Tjungurrayi.

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 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.

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LOT #62 Sally (Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda) Gabori (1924 - 2015) Mullet, 2005 97 x 141.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Mornington Island Arts, QLD Cat No. 621/SG/1108 Harding Family Collection, NSW 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 any comparable form of mark-making, prior to that time. Traditional tools, objects, or bodies were scarcely painted, and the only recorded art that relates these 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 four-and-a-half metre paintings crowded with hundreds of concentric circles, as in this work that 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 at the surface. As each fish breaks the water’s surface a wave radiates from the disruption and, for a few seconds, a circle, or hundreds of them, remain as the memory of the interaction between beings and place. These paintings allude to schools of mullet, queen fish, mackerel or tuna, but never figuratively depict them.

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LOT #63 Alkawari Dawson (C.1930 - 2010) Kalaya Wati , 2007 198 x 118 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $5,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Created at Tommy Watson’s Residence, NT Agathon Galleries, NSW Cat No. AGAD03071933 Tineriba Tribal Gallery, SA Private Collection, SA Cooee Art, NSW This painting represents Kalaya Wati Tjukurrpa - Emu Man Dreaming and the Tjukurrpa Mulapa (true Dreaming) that relates to the country of her birth.

Alkuwarri often painted a fragment of the Tjukurrpa that tooks place in the night at kalaya ngura (empty place) beside a large rockhole called Tjukarta Tjukarta.

The minyma were lying beside the rockhole trying to sleep. They were restless because a Wati Liru (Snake Man) was moving about in the shadows nearby with a lot of baby snakes. All of the camp dogs were asleep except for one who was stalking several baby emus.

The wati and minyma kalaya (men and women emus) were agitated and worried for their tjitji (children) who were running in all directions then cowered in a wiltja for shelter.

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LOT #64 Wingu Kunmanara Tingima (C.1920 - 2010) Watiku Ngankurpa, 2008 198 x 118 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $5,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Irrunytju Arts, WA Cat No. IRR081292 Agathon Gallery, NSW Cat No. AGWT0308080032 Tineriba Tribal Gallery, SA Private Collection, SA Cooee Art, NSW Wingu was born at Nyumun rockhole, in the Western Desert of Western Australia. As a young woman she travelled by foot with her mother and father to the mission at Ernabella, but returned to the desert in her later years, She lived at Nyaparti in South Australia and Irruntyju in Western Australia, spending time with her two families.

Wingu was a respected senior woman with much cultural knowledge, and painted the Tjukurpa associated with her country. The place of her birth is a sacred men’s place called Walawuru Tjukurpa - Eagle Creation Story, which she could paint, but not talk about.

The majority of her paintings are from the Kunkarrakalpa Tjukrupa (Seven Sisters creation story). Kuru Ala, one of the major sites she depicts is an important and sacred women’s place.

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LOT #65 Naata Nungurrayi (1932 - ) Marrapinti, 2003 91.5 x 153 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $10,000 - 15,000 PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, NT Cat No. NN0310121 Private Collection, VIC Naata Nungurrayi was about 30 years of age when she brought with her family to Papunya after leaving behind her beloved desert homelands in the Pollock Hills in Western Australia. These places and the life she led there have provided the wellspring of her inspiration and the subject matter for her highly sought after paintings. After initially moving to Docker River with family members in the late 1970s she finally settled in the KIntore region in the early 1980s. She began creating paintings in a carefully composed geometric style for Papunya Tula Artists in 1996 and went on to develop a looser technique and more painterly organic style from the mid 1990s onward.

This painting, in her tight grid style, depicts designs associated with the rockhole and soakage water site of Marrapinti, to the west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia. The lines are sandhills surrounding the area. A large group of senior women camped at this rockhole making the nose-bones which are worn through a hole in the nose web. These nose-bones were originally worn by both men and women but are now only worn by the older generation on ceremonial occasions. The women later traveled east passing through Wala Wala, Kiwirrkura and Ngaminya.

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LOT #66 Lily Karadada (c.1937 - ) Black Lightning Wandjina, 2003 100 x 76 cm natural earth pigment on canvas $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Our Kand Gallery, WA Cat No. OLG-LK002 Japingka Gallery, WA Cat No. JAP000617 Private Collection, WA The Wandjina, are exclusive to areas of the Kimberley in Western Australia and are said to exercise power over the rains.

For custodians, such as members of the Djanghara and Karedada families, portable images of the Wandjina are viewed as purely reproductions of the ‘real’ spirits adorning the cave walls at their most important Dreaming sites.

Wandjina images on bark, board, canvas, slate or paper were first produced for trade and exchange with missionaries travelling by lugger along the Kimberley coastline prior to mid 1970s. However the primary artistic inspiration and purpose in creating these works lay in the artist’s responsibility for maintaining the ancestral sites, and repainting them to ‘keep them strong’.

This rendition represents the pitch black thunder of lightning storms.

Lily Karedada is in her advanced years and now no longer able to paint. She is the last of the great artists with the knowledge to carry on this tradition.

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LOT #67 Cliff Reid (1948 - 2010) Crucifiction of Christ, 2005 102 x 102 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $3,500 - 4,500 PROVENANCE Papulankutja Artists, Blackstone NT Cat No. 05-821 Harvison Gallery, Perth WA Private Collection, WA Cliff Reid was born out bush with his mother and father, living a largely nomadic lifestyle. He grew up in the Jameson area and went to school for a short time at Warburton Mission. When he began painting in 2003 he concentrated his efforts on narrative works.

He was essentially a story teller in life and in art.

Reid lived at Papulankutja (also known as Blackstone) about 80km west of the tri-state (SA, WA, NT) border in the Ngaanyatjarra lands and approximately 1350 kms north east of Perth. He was a rare artist whose works stand alone in style from other artists in the region. In his raw, figurative fashion and bold powerful manner he painted Christian and traditional stories that directly communicate with the viewer. His works are instantly identifiable amongst those from a community of artists who generally paint using traditional symbolism or pure abstract form.

Cliff died in 2010, leaving a unique artistic legacy along with a large and extended family.

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LOT #68 Trevor Nickolls (1949 - 2012) Full Moon, 2010 91 x 91 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $15,000 - 20,000 PROVENANCE Estate of the Artist, SA EXHIBITED Alie[N]ation - A survey of Ausralian Urban Indigenous Art, Cooee Art Gallery, 2018 The theme of ‘encapsulation’ which began during his art school days in the 1960s became increasingly important to Nickolls from the 1990s onward as he explored the alienation of the individual in an industrialised landscape as a counterpoint to the concept of the ‘Harmony of Nature’. He coined the catchphrase ‘Dreamtime - Machinetime’ to describe the divide between Aboriginal and Western cultures. In ‘Machinetime’ humankind is trapped by its own inventions; a cramped and hostile technological environment where isolated individuals, in cell-like apartments, plug into their television sets, trying to ward off a sense of loss and anxiety as they become increasingly estranged from each other and the earth. ‘Dreamtime’ introduces a relationship to nature that, in keeping with Aboriginal beliefs, is the source of spiritual sustenance and cultural continuity underpinning the necessary conditions for a life affirming and dignified human existence.

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In this particular canvas, these two realities are juxtaposed with contrasting areas of colour, texture and spatial composition. A language of symbols fills the image; a Rainbow Serpent slides up the side of a building; a dove - symbolising peace - rests on a smiling moon and an angel stands adjacent on a cloud; the agonised profile of an entrapped human searches for the freedom of open space from within the cacophony of high rise buildings. The scene appears peaceful and serene but there is disquiet in the lifeless city below.

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LOT #69 Ian Abdulla (1947 - 2011) Looking for Bottles, 2003 152 x 90.5 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $5,000 - 7,000 PROVENANCE Purchased Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, SA, 1993 Private Collection, NSW EXHIBITED Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Centre, SA, 1993 Tyerabarrbowaryaou 2, I shall never become a whiteman, 5th Havana Biennial, Cuba, & Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1994 Alie[N]ation - A survey of Australian Aboriginal Urban Art, Cooee Art, NSW, 2018 And illestrated in Tyerabarrbowaryaou 2, I Shall Never Become a Whiteman, Exhibition catalogue., Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1994.

Ngarrindjeri artist Ian Abdulla lived all his life at Cobdolga, an early irrigation settlement in the Riverland region of South Australia. The township is located beside the Murray River. He began painting in the late 1980s relating the simple narrative stories that recorded his recollections of times and deeds that illuminated the life of the local Aboriginal people living in rural poverty. Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, his childhood memories, though simply told, are far from simple and, importantly, are deeply grounded in historical context. It is a perspective that is at once personal and political, though gently so.

The text on this artwork reads: Sometimes when things would get hard in the early days and getting low, some of us boys would go out and look for some cool drink bottles between Cobdolga and Kingston on the Murray River in the River Land to sell for the money.

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LOT #70 Cindy Nakamarra Gibson (1967 - ) Wilkinkarra - Three Rockholes at Kintore, 2016 92 x 150 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $5,500 - 7,500 PROVENANCE Palya Proper Fine Art, NT Private Collection, NT Born in Alice Springs in 1967, Cindy Nakamarra spent her childhood growing up in Yuendumu, with her mother Mitjili Napanangka Gibson and father Jiti Jiti Tjapurrula. Her uncle Pinta Pinta Tjapanangka, was one of the first members of the Western Desert art movement.

After moving to Kintore in 1987, she spent time in Alice Springs for her children’s education and worked with her father on wildlife documentaries. She collaborated on a number of her mother’s small paintings during Mitjili’s early painting years. When her mother began to paint seriously, Cindy assisted behind the scenes so that Mitjili was free to just paint. After her mother’s passing in 2010 Cindy resumed painting in her own right.

Cindy’s traditional country is around Winparky (Mount Web), which is near Kiwirkurra, not far from the south western border of Lake Mackay (Wilkinkarra).

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LOT #71 Judy Napangardi Watson (C.1925 - 2016) Mina Mina Jukurrpa - Janyinki, 2013 122 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Warlurkulangu Arts, Yuendumu NT Cat No. 54/73 Art Mob, TAS Cat No. AM9614/13 Private Collection, TAS ILLISTRATED Cf. for a similar work see Christine Nicholls, ‘The Three Napangardi’s, ‘To the Memory of Maggie Napangardi Watson’ in Ryan,J; (ed.)

Colour Power-Aboriginal Art Post 1984 in the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, 2004, pp123-125 and p.33 illus.

At Mina Mina, ancestral women danced and performed ceremonies before travelling to Janyinki and other sites as they moved east toward Alcoota. During their ritual dancing, digging sticks rose up out of the ground and the women carried these implements with them on their long journey east singing and dancing all the way, with no sleep. The hairstring is anointed with red ochre and is a secret and sacred connection between the women’s ceremony and the country, which enables them to connect with the spirit of the Dreaming.

They danced with enthusiasm and great enjoyment. The potent life force with which they imbued the country is evoked in Judy’s love of colour and richly textured rippling surface. Painted in the artist’s distinct ‘dragged’ dotting style, Judy mimics the dance of her ancestors across the country during its creation.

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LOT #72 Kunmanara Wingu Tingima (C.1935 - 2010) Nyumun, 2003 81 x 65.5 synthetic polymer paint on canvas $2,000, 3,000 PROVENANCE Irrunytju Arts, WA Cat No. IRRWT03022 Marshall Arts, SA Deutscher and Hackett, Important Aboriginal & Oceanic Art, Melbourne, 27/03/2013, Lot No. 75 Private Collection, USA A senior Pitjantjara woman, Wingu grew up in the semi-nomadic tradition at Nyumun, close by the rock hole at Kuru Ala, W.A., a sacred place for the seven sisters, Kungkarrakalpa. This story became the focus of many of her paintings.

Though she only painted over the ten years before her death at the age of about 90, Wingu’s success as an artist was striking. She was considered a master of colour, knowing instinctively how to create effects through layers and texturing that make her works comparable to the depth and beauty of the star-filled desert skies.

Wingu didn’t illustrate events or depict her country explicitly, but evoked and alluded to ancient imagery drawn from deep cultural knowledge. Her ideas for paintings would often come to her in dreams or visitations from her totemic Eagle Ancestors, who could also forewarn her of significant events.

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LOT #73 Eubena Nampitjin (1924 - 2013) Untitled - Artist’s Country near Kunawarritji, 1998 80 x 120 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Warlayirti Artists, WA Cat. EN 001/98 Creative Native Gallery, Fremantle, WA Private Collection, USA 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.

After the death of her daughter Ema Gimme Nungerayai in 1993, Eubena returned to her birthplace near Well 33 on the Canning Sock Route and did not paint again until encouraged to return to Balgo Hills two years later. From that time on she painted alone with larger, freer dots and a more gestural style executed with a palate of red, yellow and pink. In time these late career works became more akin to finger painting with fluid brushstrokes and only the occasional intimate section actually dotted with a stick.

In this work Eubena has painted her country along the middle stretches of the Canning Stock Route, near Kunawarritji (Well 33) and a pamarr (hill) named Yilpa. This is place where Eubena would often hunt and gather food. The strong lines in the painting depict the tali (sandhills) that dominate this country.

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LOT #74 Abie Kemarre Loy (1972 - ) Body Painting, 2005 122.5 x 183 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $6,000 - 8,000 PROVENANCE Commissioned by Gallerie Australis, SA Cat No. GAAL0605DC2 Cooee Art Gallery, NSW Cat No. 16754 Private Collection, SA Abie Loy was taught to paint by her grandmother, the multi award winning artist 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 (clays), charcoal and ash are used as body paint and 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 the total well-being and health of their community. This painting shows the grandmother’s dancing and teaching all the young girls the Awelye.

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LOT #75 Angelina Pwerle Ngal (1952 - ) Bush Plum Country, 2002 120 x 90 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Simon Turner International, QLD, Cat No. STI8902 Coo-ee Art Gallery, NSW Cat No. 11571 Private Collection, Sydney, NSW As with her sisters, Kathleen and Poly Ngal, Angelina began producing batiks and wooden sculptures in the mid 1980s, probably influenced by her late husband, the older brother of Cowboy Loy Pwerl. She was formerly known as Angelina ‘Pwerl’, her husband’s name.

Pwerl(e) in Alyawarr language is the equivalent to Ngal in the Anmatyerr language, and it is as Angelina Ngal that she is referred to today. She began painting as part of the CAAMA ‘summer project’ in 1988-9 and, already at 40 years of age, was included in the first exhibition of Utopia women’s paintings held in Alice Springs in 1980.

Angelina quickly adapted to painting on canvas and subsequently gained international recognition. Her work can be seen as a contemporary dialogue or translation of the cultural, geographic, social and religious components of Anmatjerre life. Her intimate renditions of country are delicately layered and can be read and appreciated at a superficial level for their abstraction and painterliness. At a deeper level, however, they depict the cultural and social mores of the society in which she lives.

Angelina paints her grandfather’s country, Alparra. Many of her paintings depict the Bush Plum, which she represents through a focus of many coloured dots flooding the canvas. She also paints the multicoloured wild flowers of her country, producing patchworks of colour in an ethereal landscape.

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LOT #76 Nym Bunduk (1900 - 1974) Untitled - Water Dreaming, 1973 63 x 23 cm natural earth pigment on bark, framed $2,000 - 3,000 PROVENANCE Painted at Wadeye (Port Keats), NT Private Collection, UK Nym Bunduk was born around 1903 and grew up to be an influential bark artist and cultural elder of the Murrinhapatha people. He lived most his life around Port Keats (Wadeye) and had strong cultural contacts with inland desert groups. This relationship with inland desert Aboriginals is evident in many of his best works which have concentric circles depicting waterholes within his clans lands.

In this work the artist has depicted totemic wells near his birthplace.

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LOT #77 Rexie Barmgardja Woods (c.1964 - ) Mimi Sprit, 2003 187 x 5 x 3 cm natural earth pigment on wood $1,500 - 1,800 PROVENANCE Aboriginal Fine Arts Gallery, NT Private Collection, VIC This sculpture is accompanied by a photo of the artist with this and two additional Mimi carvings taken in the Darwin gallery prior to sale.

Myths of men and women such as the Mimi myth, serve to delineate the roles of men and women, and the standards of behaviour.

The Mimi are long wispy spirits who live in the rocky escarpments of Arnhem Land where winds rarely penetrate. If they stray from the escarpments their necks, even though very short, are likely to snap in a breeze or their arms may blow off. According to Aboriginal lore, the Mimi were once people who inhabited the Stone Country prior to the present day Aboriginal people. They are shy, friendly spirits that are believed to have taught Aboriginal people to hunt and the laws concerning the proper dissection and dispersal of game and preparation of food.

While carvings of totemic ancestor figures were occasionally produced during the 1950s and 1960s, the burgeoning market demand for diversified product led during the 1980s to a growth in the number of corkwood sculptures depicting totemic creatures and spirit figures, including Mimi. Sculpture proved to be an ideal medium for depicting the thin and fragile, Mimi spirits that emerge from fissures in Arnhem Land rock escarpments. Crusoe Kuningbal became renowned for his Mimi figures, which ranged in height from just 50 cms to 4 metres and he was said to be the sole owner of the right to depict Mimi‘s in three-dimensional form. Yet after his death in 1984 a number of artists in Maningrida, Oenpelli and Ramingining began making these spirit ancestors that are otherwise depicted in rock art and their narrative bark paintings.

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LOT #78 Artist Once Known Aboriginal Parrying Shield, c. late C19th 83 x 8 cm incised wood Detail

$5,000 - 7,000 PROVENANCE Lake Victoria, NSW Private Collection, NSW Private Collection, VIC

Of extended lozenge shape, with fine incised zig zag striated pattern in relief on front and solid wood handle and fine adzing on the back. Most likely of Barkindji heritage. Mounted.

LOT #79 Artist Once Known Central Australia painted Aboriginal Coolamon, c.1975 58 x 28 cm natural earth pigments on beanwood $1,300 - 1,500 PROVENANCE Private Collection, VIC

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A beanwood coolamon decorated with traditional desert design featuring roundels representing sites, bird tracks and travelling lines front and back.

LOT #80 Craig Koomeeta (1977 - ) Apeletch Brothers, 2006 Large: 108 x 55 x 21 cm Small: 103 x 33 x 17 cm natural earth pigments with synthetic binder on milkwood $2,000 - 4,000 PROVENANCE Wik and Kugu Art Centre, QLD Private Collection, VIC Accompanied by a certificate from the Wik and Kugu art centre, Aurukun, Qld The production of wooden sculpture in Aurukun began during the 1950s under the supervision of the mission carpenter Jock Henderson. Prior to this sculptures were more naturalistic and clay was a primary medium for figurative pieces normally restricted to ceremonial use.

Craig Koomeeta began carving at the age of fourteen in 1991 under the supervision of his uncles, Clifford and Roland Toikalkin.

Drawn to sculpture because of its physical and tactile nature, he became one of the youngest carvers at Aurukun at the time.

Craig is a member of the Apelech regional group which consists of clans whose estates are south of Archer River along and near the coast near Aurukun in equatorial Far North Queensland. Apelech ceremonies relate mythical events which occurred during the formation of the world when two brothers (the Pul-Uchen )travelled across the land and waters establishing totemic centres in each region. Kencherang, is Craig Koomeeta’s mother’s clan country. The Apelech men visited this site on the Kirke River where salt and fresh water meet. Here the Freshwater and Saltwater Crocodile fought and separated thereby creating two distinct totemic subsections of the clan.

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LOT #81 Artist Once Known (Ganalbingu) Magpie Goose, c.1975 59 x 29 cm natural earth pigments on wood $1,200 - 1,500 PROVENANCE Maningrida Arts and Culture, NT Private Collection, NSW The Magpie Goose (gumang) is a favourite food amongst the clans that live in the viscinity of the Arafura Swamp in Arnhem Land. At the end of the monsoon season in April each year, magpie geese in their thousands rest in the shallow waters of the Arafura Swamp.

Amongst the Ganalbingu, Gurrumba Gurrumba, literally means ‘a flock of geese’. Here between the ridges to the east of the swamp, is a freshwater billabong which was made by the Goose Spirit. It’s topography which has a circular pattern is in the form of a goose nest. The geese, their eggs, and their nests are sacred to Ganalbingu people — the nest is sometimes thought of as a resting place for souls.

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LOT #82 Jimmy Pike (1940 - 2002) Paparta Waterhole, c.1990 118 x 90 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $2,500 - 3,500 PROVENANCE Purchased at an exhibition to raise funds for Environs Kimberley.

Private Collection, USA Certificate and story supplied by Pat Lowe 30.6.09 EXHIBITED Jimmy Pike, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London, 1998 Having spent many years away from his homeland before returning to establish his own outstation Jimmy’s passion was in rediscovering and maintaining the sacred sites and waterholes that once sustained his family’s nomadic journeying. This helped him to consolidate the mythological world of ancestors and Dreaming stories that were his people’s spiritual source.

The unique physical and spiritual setting of Jimmy Pike’s Walmatjarri desert homeland, was the wellspring of his dynamic creativity, which became identified with its compelling, sinuous line and intense colour. Many of his paintings and prints represented maps and narratives about this country and incorporated decorative patterns his people used on spears, boomerangs or utensils. Yet Pike also brought an individual perspective to his subject matter, which gave his work a very contemporary flavour. His two-dimensional flattened figures and energetic designs conveyed a hard-edge modern sensibility.

According to legend, Paparta used to be like a man before he turned into a waterhole. A waterhole that is most often dry, in the shape of a man. He was staying at Warnti with his two wives. He looked after all the people and carried water for them in his coolamon. When they complained he poured water on the ground to punish them. When other people sent food the old man ate it all himself. The people were starving and got angry and killed him with their boomerangs. Today the waterhole is dry with trees standing all around it where the people were.

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LOT #83 Ned Grant (c.1941 - ) Wakurra, 2006 92 x 155 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $2,000 - 3,000 PROVENANCE Spinifex Arts Project, WA Cat No. C488.

Private Collection, USA Ned Grant was born in the Spinifex Country in the Great Victoria Desert, WA and was inducted into Men’s Law in the ranges country north-west of Laverton. Ned was taken into Cundeelee Mission in the late 1950s, and by the early 1980s he had become one of the elders who helped drive the return to Spinifex country. Today Ned is the main ceremonial leader of the Tjintu (sun side) of Spinifex society.

He began painting in 1997 and was one of 17 men who collaboratively painted their particular estates, which when merged together, formed the Men’s Native Title painting that was presented to the High Court as the basis for the successful Spinifex land claim. Ned has not been a prolific individual painter. He has, however, been an integral contributor to various men’s collaborative works.

This painting depicting all of the major sites in his country is a rare individual work by the artist.

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LOT #84 Estelle Hogan (c.1937 - ) & Anne Hogan (1945 - ) Minga & Tarlu, 2009 136 x 109 cm synthetic polymer on Belgian linen $4,000 - 4,500 PROVENANCE Spinifex Art Project, WA Cat No. C868 Cooee Art, NSW EXHIBITED Tracking the Wati Kutjarra, November 2009, Coo-ee Art Gallery In this painting Estelle and Anne have collaborated to paint the a Minyma Tjuta (Seven Sisters) sites at Tjuntun and Minga. Estelle Hogan was born at a sacred men’s site which cannot be discussed openly.

Estelle often paints the Seven Sisters. She is a senior Western Desert custodian for this Dreaming and was born in this country. Just few of the places Estelle has included in this painting are rnki, Tolu, Yutu, Peerl, Yawart, Baltatajara (birthplace of Estelle), Minga, Kalyka, Tjuntun, Katubara and Miwaratjara .

Anne is also able to speak of the Seven Sisters who travelled through Minga and Tjuntun on their journey across the Western Desert.

The story is long and detailed and wherever the women were seen to be camped and active renders it sacred. The women are chasing a large woma python and in turn are being pursued by a “cheeky” old man named Wati Nyirru who is interested in claiming one of the women as a wife. They are of the wrong kinship group and therefore his lustful advances are elicit.This painting by these two Spinifex artists is full of knowledge, experience and authority.

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LOT #85 1. Lindy Rontji Panangka (1962 - ) Galah Pot, 2010, 31 x 19 x 19 cm 2. Dawn Wheeler Ngala (1953 - ) Budgerigar Pot, 2009, 31 x 18 x 18 cm 3. Judith Pungkarta Inkamala (1947 - ) Hawk Pot, 2009, 44 x 25 x 25 cm 2009 - 2010 terracotta and underglaze $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Hermannsburg Potters, NT Cat Nos. LR362-10, DW 166-9, JI 962-9 Private Collection, NSW

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Many of the Hermannsburg potters have inherited the style of Albert Namatjira in their depiction of the land and creatures of the desert. Their pots are decorated with scenes from the Western MacDonnell Ranges and tell stories in clay with their own unique artistic twist.

LOT #86 Lydia Balbal (c.1958 - ) Murga, 2008 75.5 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen $4,000 - 6,000 PROVENANCE Short Street Gallery, WA, Cat No. 24308 Private Collection, WA Lydia Balbal is a Mangala woman who was born near Punmu in the Great Sandy Desert of W.A. Her family were some of the last to walk out to the coastal town of Bidyadanga (then La Grange Mission) located two hours south of Broome in the early 70s after severe drought threatened her people’s existence. She first began painting in 2007 and her works received immediate attention from collectors.

According to Lydia, “Snake in this rockhole. He underground, he quiet one. This big rockhole. This good hunting place we dig for eggs.

This one desert side. This mummy and father country. This Mangala country.”

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LOT #87 Ginger Nobby Wikilyiri (c.1932 - ) The Hungry Man, 2006 101.5 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on cavnas $3,000 - 4,000 PROVENANCE Tjala Arts, NT Cat No. 481-06 Merenda Gallery, WA Cat No. MG19 Private Collection, WA Ginger Wikilyiri was born at Kunamata a rock hole south of Nyapari in 1930. He is senior law man with a passion for land management and worked for many years as a ranger for Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.

Ginger’s marvellously expressive and vibrantly coloured works embody a wealth of traditional knowledge. He employs both figurative elements and dot patterns when his composing his highly charged and expressive images.

In this Dreaming story a man is so hungry he eats a tree and his kuka (cooked food) all at once. It is a story that is performed with traditional singing and dancing by Anangu Pitjantatjara men. The artist says the dance is like a slow walk.

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LOT #88 Elaine Warnatjura Lane (c.1940 - ) Waratjarra, 2006 152 x 122 cm synthetic polymer paint on canvas $3,000 - 5,000 PROVENANCE Papulankutja Artists, Blackstone NT, Cat No. 06.1159 Private Collection, WA Elaine was born close to Kutukampara rockhole near Mantamaru (Jameson). As a young child she travelled with her family between Papulankutja (Blackstone) and Mantamaru and then back to Warburton Ranges visiting Wirtapiwara, Illinpiri and Watatjara. This imparted a deep attachment to and profound knowledge of her culture and her country.

Elaine now lives at Blackstone, close to her brother Jimmy Donegan, a senior law man and artist, in remote Western Australia. She is a respected senior law woman and the sister of the well known painter Pantjiti Maclean. Elaine is also a leading fibre artist. She first began making baskets and animal sculptures in 1995 and was part of the team of women from Blackstone who made the full sized grass Toyota that won the National Aboriginal Art Award in 2005. Elaine’s work reflects the seasons with many overlapping layers melding together, to express the texture and flow of the land.

In this work Elaine has painted the spine of the Blackstone Ranges that wind down the place where the rocks sing.

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AUCTION | Aboriginal Works of Art Tuesday 27th November 2018, 7PM Auction Location Cooee Art 326 Oxford St. Paddington, NSW Gala Auction Launch Thursday 22nd November 6 - 8 pm Viewing Times Friday 23rd - Monday 26th 10am - 5pm Tuesday 27th 10am - 2pm

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