Punpuni Mataminga

PUPUNI MANTIMINGA (Fine

Lines)

PUPUNI MANTIMINGA (Fine Lines)

In

39 Cook Street, Flinders, Vic 3929

September 22- October 10, 2023

Front: Delores

Tipuamantumirri, Winga/ Tidal Moverment, ochres on canvas, 120 x 180 cm (detail).

Left: Delores Tipuamantumirri

Over page: Pwoja, the traditional wooden combs used by Munupi artists.

Text © Emily McCulloch Childs, Susan McCulloch & Munupi Arts

Design © Lisa Reidy

Images © The artists

Published by Everywhen Artspace

painting.

EXHIBITINGARTISTS

ALISONPURUNTATAMERI

CHRISTINEPURUNTATAMERI DELORESTIPUAMANTUMIRRI

KARINACOOMBES

REBEKAHYUNUPINGU

SIMPLICIATipungwuti

THECLABERNADETTE

PURUNTATAMERI

FINE LINES OF MUNUPI ARTISTS

Exhibited and acquired by major public galleries and selected as finalists in leading award exhibitions, the recent work of the seven artists in this exhibition, has been highly acclaimed for both its extraordinary finesse and clarity of design.

The work of thirty-nine-year-old Alison Puruntatameri (below), granddaughter of the famous late cultural leader Justin Puruntatameri, dazzles with mesmeric fine lines. The 2.4 metre work shown here was a finalist in the 2023 Ramsay Art Award at the Art Gallery of South Australia. In softly hued ochres Alison depicts her most favoured theme – Winga, the powerful tidal movements of waters in and around the Tiwi Islands – the ripple of waves and the king tides at full moon in the wet season which transform the coastline in elemental surges.

The crossed and interwoven lines of Christine Puruntatameri’s Pwonga, pay homage to the creation Spider Woman ancestor and the fine spider webs which indicate that water is near.

Leading mid-generation artist Delores Tipuamantumirri - only daughter of the famous late artist Cornelia Tipuamantumirri ‘s work has become highly acclaimed and sought after in recent years. Using the fine traditional Tiwi comb called pwoja, she creates lyrically layered, detailed and intricate works of great beauty based on the finely weaves of fish nets.

Young generation artist Karina Coombes, a granddaughter of Justin Puruntatameri, has taken a departure here from her well-known images of the night sky with a delightfully different work that pays tribute to the intertwined natural fibre floor mats made by the Tiwi.

In her evocative work Kumwirrupuni, youngest artist in the group, Rebekah Yunipingu, depicts the smoke of the ceremonies that send the spirits of those recently passed back to their ancestral homes.

Forty-four-year-old artist, Simplicia Tipungwuti started painting with Munupi Arts in 2019, and has since developed a fine style in works of unique clarity. Her encyclopaedic works relate the travels and events of the famous Tiwi creation ancestral woman – believed to have created the Islands themselves, the seas that surround them and all the sea creatures and other animals.

Mid-career artist Thecla Bernadette Puruntatameri has been making art since the early 1990s including participating in cultural exchanges with artists in Tasmania and Victoria and print making workshops in Canberra. Her works are in numerous private collections and the Art Gallery of South Australia. A teacher for several decades, since her retirement from teaching in 2017, Thecla has returned to painting - her works depicting many different creation stories. These include Yikwani (Fire) – the all-important tool for cooking, warmth, and regenerating Country.

Susan McCulloch

September 2023

Over page: Delores Tipuamantumirri painting.

THE LIVING LEGACY OF JUSTINPURUNTATAMERI

Over a decade has passed since I visited Munupi Arts and interviewed the most senior elder of Melville Island, the late artist, knowledge holder and great storyteller, Justin Puruntatameri.

My research was part of a State Library of Victoria Creative Fellowship on the Australian colonial frontier and Indigenous resistance. I was extremely fortunate to be able to interview Puruntatameri about the extensive Tiwi resistance at nearby Fort Dundas (Punata), the first British settlement in the Northern Territory.

I found him waiting for me one morning at his spot at the back of the art centre, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. While we spoke, they listened attentively. He was a great teacher, a man of much knowledge. His extensive knowledge of local flora and fauna had been published, he had been featured in The Australian newspaper as the most senior traditional leader in the small Melville Island community of Pirlangimpi. Describing him as a great new artist his work was compared to Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns – with, however, a ‘distinct’ voice of the old Tiwi: he was estimated to be the most respected ‘culture man’ on both the Tiwi Islands.

Puruntatameri was born at Kadipuwu, next to the miscalculated site where the British would build their short-lived fort. His knowledge of the fort, which lasted from 1824–9, was extensive and he told me of events and features not previously documented.

Together with Munupi staff we walked around the old fort and trenches, commenting on the foolishness of the British to think trenches would be any use against the Tiwi spears. Puruntatameri showed me the two tutini he had made, those famous sculpture headstones made in the final stage of the pukumani ceremony, for the doctor and officer who had been killed by the Tiwi as retribution for the British capture of their warrior Tambu, an act of war.

I asked him why he had made these beautiful works for outsiders who had settled on his people’s land in such a brutal way. ‘I felt sorry for them,’ he said ‘having no headstone.’

This is revealing of the Tiwi’s generosity and nature, as it is of their use of art to express the deep cycles of life; birth, creation, death, and to communicate with each other and with outsiders.

A new blossoming

In a subsequent catalogue essay for an exhibition of Munupi Arts held at Artitja Fine Art in South Fremantle, I wrote of the ‘sophisticated geometric design and meditative mark making, a balanced fusion of contemporary adaptation and classical tradition, and the strength of generations of culturally significant families which underly Munupi Arts.’

The art centre had, I noted, ‘in recent years blossomed into a new life brought about through the art practice of older masters, bringing a renewed energy and traditional vigour to the art.’

This continues in the contemporary art movement today: in paintings by Munupi foundational artist Thecla Bernadette Puruntatameri, mid-generation Delores Tipuamantumirri, and the new generation artists Alison Puruntatameri, Christine Purantatmeri, Karina Coombes, Rebekah Yunupingu and Simplicia Tipungwuti.

Justin Puruntatameri passed away just several months after I visited and interviewed him. His passing has left a great gap in the Tiwi world and the Australian arts.

It is inspiring however to see his legacy continuing on through the work of Munupi artists and his grandchildren – Alison Puruntatameri and Karina Coombs – represented in this exhibition.

I think he would have been most proud of Pupuni Mantiminga featuring the especially fine lined work that has recently brought these artists acclaim – another great addition to the magnificent cultural lexicon that is the art of Munupi Arts.

Emily McCulloch Childs

September 2023

ALISON PURUNTATAMERI

ALISON PURUNTATAMERI

Alison was born in Pirlangimpi on Melville Island in 1984. She grew up in Pirlangimpi and went to the local school. After she completed school she worked in child care. She has one daughter, Annette Orsto known locally as Sugar Plum who is a great favourite at the art centre studio where Alison paints with her mother Paulina (Jedda) Puruntatameri, her partner James Orsto and the other artists. It was Alison’s grandfather, the late Justin Puruntatameri, a very senior law man who told Alison she should have a go at painting. He knew all the old songs and remembered visits by the Maccassans to the Tiwi Islands when he was a boy. Alison would listen to his stories of his paintings at the art centre and on country. He used to take the family hunting when she was little. He would also take them out bush bashing in his two door Toyota ute called Black Nose. He used to teach them how to cook wallabies, mussels, lots of foods all together under the ground wrapped in paperbark.

Alison started painting at Munupi Arts Centre in late 2011. Since,her work has come to be highly acclaimed and she has been a finalist in several prestigious art awards, including the Museum of Contemporary Arts

2014 Primavera Art Award; Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (Telstra NATSIAA) 2022; The Alice Prize 2022; and the Art Gallery of South Australia’s 2023 Ramsay Art Awards.

This work was selected as a finalist for the Ramsay Art Awards, Art Gallery of South Australia, 2023. It depicts the tidal movement of waters in and around the seas and creeks of the Tiwi Islands. Not just influencing. fishing and hunting opportunities, the movement of water carries masses of silt and sand, transforming the land and changing the coastal landscape.

Winga can also be translated as ‘waves’, just one part of the changing tides. Tidal surgesare at their most powerful when a king tide occurs during the Wet Season, especially during a full moon.

Alison has a strong bond to the waters surrounding the Tiwi Islands, forged by a lifetime of memories living encircled within the tides of the Arafura Sea.

Alison Puruntatatmeri, Winga (Tidal Movement), 2023, natural ochres on linen, 181 x 243 cm | MM7093 | $29500

CHRISTINE PURUNTATAMERI

CHRISTINE PURUNTATAMERI

Christine Puruntatameri was born in Darwin in 1983 and grew up on Melville Island at Pirlangimpi. Christine went to Darwin for High School. Her Father’s Country is Rangini, Melville Island, NT, and her Mother’s Country is Alice Springs, NT. Her Skin is Arinkuwula (Stone), and her Dreaming is Kirilima (Jungle Fowl).

Christine attended Kormilda College and completed year 11 at St. Johns College before returning to Pirlangimpi. Back on Pirlangimpi she met her first partner and they had a daughter. They moved to WA in 2002 and had two more children. Christine moved back to Pirlangimpi with her three children in 2008.

While her children were going to school she came to the Art Centre whenever she could. Christine has worked at the Pirlangimpi store since 2017 and when she has the time she comes to the Art Centre to paint. She loves to paint and uses a pwoja (comb) to apply ochres to canvases.

This painting tells a story about Pwonga the spider woman who gave us the designs of the web lines. When Tiwi look for water, they look for the spider webs which tell us there is water near.

Christine Puruntatameri, Pwonga, 2023, ochre on canvas, 180 x 120 cm | MM7092 | $7900

DELORES TIPUAMANTUMIRRI

DELORES TIPUAMANTUMIRRI

Delores Tipuamantumirri is the only child of the respected elders Cornelia and Steven Tipuamantumirri. She was born in 1959 and lives in Pirlamgimpi, Melville Island. Delores Tipuamantumirri had a stepbrother, adopted by her parents after he was brought to the Tiwi Islands during the Stolen Generation of the 1960’s from Peppimenarti, NT.

Her late father Steven Tipuamantumirri was a ceremony singer and the first Tiwi man who joined the Tiwi Land Council. Of her artist mother, Cornelia Tipuamantumirri, she speaks with great respect as a good teacher of traditional Tiwi culture. It was through her that she acquired weaving, dancing and hunting skills. Now Delores is passing on these skills to her three children and nine grandchildren.

Prior to joining Munupi Art in 2008, she worked at the Women’s centre and Aged Care in Pirlangimpi. Delores Tipuamantumirri uses the traditional Tiwi comb for her painting, applying natural ochre tones to linen, creating a moving ripple effect suggesting a thrown fishing net. Delores was a finalist in the Hadley’s Art Prize 2023.

This work depicts the tidal movement of waters in and around the seas and creeks of the Tiwi Islands. Not just influencing fishing and hunting opportunities, the movement of water carries masses of silt and sand, transforming the land and changing the coastal landscape. Winga can also be translated as ‘waves’, just one part of the changing tides. Tidal surges are at their most powerful when a king tide occurs during the Wet Season, especially during a full moon.

Delores has a strong bond to the waters surrounding the Tiwi Islands, forged by a lifetime of memories living encircled within the tides of the Arafura Sea.

This work depicts the tidal movement of waters in and around the seas and creeks of the Tiwi Islands. Not just influencing fishing and hunting opportunities, the movement of water carries masses of silt and sand, transforming the land and changing the coastal landscape. Winga can also be translated as ‘waves’, just one part of the changing tides. Tidal surges are at their most powerful when a king tide occurs during the Wet Season, especially during a full moon.

Delores has a strong bond to the waters surrounding the Tiwi Islands, forged by a lifetime of memories living encircled within the tides of the Arafura Sea.

KARINA COOMBES

Karina was born in 1982 and is the daughter of Florence Puruntatameri-Coombes, and Graeme Coombes. Her mother is a Tiwi woman from Pirlangimpi Community on Melville Island. Her father originated from Queenstown, New Zealand but married Florence as a young man and called Pirlangimpi home for over 30 years. He raised Karina and her siblings on the islands, visiting New Zealand only a handful of times during that time with his wife and children. Graeme passed away in 2010.

Karina still lives permanently at Pirlangimpi with her three children, Stanley, Latoya and Janae. She works for the Tiwi Islands Training and Employment Board. Also now known as ‘Penny’ due to her being a Penrith Panthers supporter as a young girl, she now follows AFL more so than Rugby League.

Her artistic career began in mid-2010 under the direction of her grandfather, Justin Puruntatameri and her aunty Florence (Justin’s eldest daughter). Justin, in particular, was able to give Karina invaluable advice on what she could correctly portray as defined by her Tiwi family ties. She has since progressed from depicting Jarrikalani and Tapalinga, to portraying the various incarnations of the night sky as it appears over the Tiwi Islands.

In this painting Karina depicts the traditional floor mats that are woven and dyed from natural fibres.

REBEKAH YUNUPINGU

Rebekah was born in 1992 in Darwin and raised between the communities of Pirlangimpi and Wurrimyanga, back then it was called Nguiu.

‘My country is Pinyanapi I get my Dreaming, country and blood from my Father. My Mother’s Country is Yimpinari, Melville Island. My Dreaming is Trick Dance.

My Mother’s Parents were Marjorie and Dinny Dunn. Father’s Parents are Celesta and Leaonard Tungatalum, being the eldest of their grandchildren I grew up mostly with them. Traveling, going to ceremonies, kulama, funerals.

My grandfather was a strong culture man who would make sure me and my three sisters had to participate in our culture parts. I grew up sketching landscapes with my father Daryl, it wasn’t until I lost my youngest son in 2018 that I took up painting. It helped me emotionally when I had bad thoughts, or depression and suicidal ideas. I’m glad that I still have something that still helps me today with everyday life.’

Rebekah is an emerging artist whose work is attracting considerable attention for its unique patternation and fine execution.

When a person passes on, their house is smoked. In the dry season they also use Kumwirrupuni for the ceremony to send their spirit back to their home land.

SIMPLICIA Tipungwuti

SIMPLICIA Tipungwuti

Simplicia Tipungwuti was born in 1979 on Bathurst Island. She went to the Catholic primary school. Simplicia’s mother moved to Pirlangimpi with her when she was 13 years old and she has lived there ever since. Simplicia found her partner in Pirlangimpi and they have had 5 children. Simplicia’s mother in-law Virginia Galarla also paints at the Art Centre. Simplicia joined the Munupi Art Centre in 2019. She is an emerging artist who prefers working on larger canvases with her intricate and unique stye.

Long-time – Old People. This painting is about long-time ago and this one old lady who had six kids. They were hungry and thirsty looking for food and water.

This one old lady she was travelling around. There was nothing no water. Even no animals. She travelled with her kids behind her back. And she started to make a hole and then the water came out. Then they had lots of animals, different kinds. She made four Islands like Darwin, Bathurst and here (Melville Island). She made lots of sea creatures that were good as food. Crabs, barramundis, mud mussels, longbums, stingrays, turtles, dugongs, fishes. And she made the islands.

She was travelling with her kids behind making more water and islands because it was all empty. Then there were lots of people then. She made the waters and all the sea animals. Then she made the islands. Then there were old people and young people. They were making a fire and then they started dancing around the fire. They were happy because water was everywhere.

THECLA BERNADETTE PURUNTATAMERI

THECLA BERNADETTE PURUNTATAMERI

Thecla Puruntatameri was born at Nguiu, Bathurst Island (Wurrumyianga) in 1971 and grew up on Melville Island at Garden Point (Pirlangimpi). Her Father’s Country is Rangini, Melville Island, NT and her Mother’s Country is Wangarruwu, Bathurst Island, NT. Her Dreaming is the Kirilima (Jungle Fowl).

Thecla went to primary school at Pularumpi School and to St Johns College in Darwin for high school. She completed year 10 in 1989 and then came back to Pirlangimpi became an artist at Munupi Art Centre. In 2002 after completing a Certificate II in Arts and Crafts at Batchelor College, Thecla started to work as an assistant teacher at the Pirlangimpi School until she retired from her teaching assistant position in 2017. Since this time Thecla has painted on canvas and on paper with natural ochres.

Thecla participated in print making workshops in Canberra (1998), the Pacific Arts Festival Raratonga, Cook Islands (1992) and cultural exchanges with indigenous artists from Tasmania and Victoria. Thecla’s artworks are included in many private collections in Australia and overseas as well as in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Yikwani is the Tiwi name for fire. An important tool in past and present Tiwi culture, fire is still used for cooking and warmth, especially during the cooler Dry Season nights. It is also used for burning off overgrown vegetation following the heavy ‘Wet Season’ rains (which covers the period of late Spring through to early Autumn), regenerating and encouraging new growth and aiding in hunting trips.

Thecla Bernadette Puruntatameri, Yikwani, 2023, ochre on canvas, 180 x 120 cm | MM7091 | $7900

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PUPUNI MANTIMINGA (Fine Lines)

Significant ochres from the Tiwi Islands

In partnership with Munupi Arts

Everywhen Artspace

39 Cook Street, Flinders, Vic 3929

September 22–October 10, 2023