Uta Uta Tjangala, circa 1926-1989, TINGARI JOURNEY,

synthetic polymer paint on linen   
bears Papunya Tula Artists catalogue number UU860316 on the reverse  
241 BY 351CM  

Provenance: 
Painted at Kintore in 1986 
Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs 
Donald Kahn Collection  

Exhibited: 
Aboriginal Art from the Collection of Donald Kahn, Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Florida, 1991; Carolino Augusteum Museum, Salzburg, The Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Naprstkovo Museum, Prague and The Museum of Ethnology, Warsaw during 1992-1993
Dreamings - Tjukurrpa: Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert, The Donald Kahn Collection, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, 26 July-16 October 1994 
Australian Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert- The Donald Kahn Collection, Fruit Market Gallery, Edinburgh, 3 December 1994-28 January 1995 
Desert Dreaming: Australian Aboriginal Art, Albertina, Vienna, 15 June - 26 August 2007

  
Literature: 
Geoffrey Bardon and Vivien Johnson, Australian Aboriginal Art from the Collection of Donald Kahn, Miami: Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, 1991, p.40, cat.no.9 (IIlus.), p.70 
Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker (ed.), Dreamings - Tjukurrpa: Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert, The Donald Kahn Collection, Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1994, pp.88-89, cat.no.9 (colour illus.)

Cf. Yumari, 1981, in the collection of the National Museum of Australia, and Old Man's Dreaming, 1983, in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, in P. Sutton, (ed.), Dreamings. The art of Aboriginal Australia, Melbourne: Viking in association with The Asia Society Galleries, New York, 1988, fig. 179, cat.no.62, p.137, and Fig.178, cat.no.61, p.136, respectively; and in Perkins, H. and Hannah Fink (eds.), Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales in association with Papunya Tula Artists, Sydney, 2000, pp.90-91 and pp.92-93 respectively. Yumari, 1981, is also illustrated in V. Johnson (ed.), Papunya painting, Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2007, p.96; and Old Man's Dreaming, 1983, is illustrated in V. Johnson, Dreamings of the Desert, Adelaide: The Art Gallery of South Australia, 1996, p.51.
 
By 1981 Uta Uta had commenced a series of monumental canvases on the scale of Tingari Journey, 1986, that relate the epic narratives of the Tingari Beings at the myriad sites in the artist's traditional homelands. The series also includes Yumari, 1981, and Old Man's Dreaming, 1983, mentioned above, as well as Tingari man at Kintore, 1987, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.
 
The eminent anthropologist Fred Myers, who conducted his fieldwork amongst the Pintupi in the early 1970s, suggests that a number of visits undertaken by Uta Uta to his country in the early 1980s were the catalyst for the first of these major paintings. Myers' supports this view with reference to Andrew Crocker who was the manager of Papunya Tula Artists at the time. Crocker wrote, ‘...such renewal of acquaintance with sites of importance inspires exceptional work. So does the showing of interest in the sites and their related mythologies'. Uta Uta painted Yumari with the assistance of a number of Pintupi artists soon after he made a trip to the Kintore area in May, 1981, with Myers and Crocker (F. Myers, Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002, p.163).

Soon after, Uta Uta had established his outstation at Muyinga, west of Walungurru (Kintore).
Tingari Journey, 1986, records the journey of a group of Tingari Men travelling from east to the west just as the artist had done a number of times prior to creating this work to visit important sacred sites represented by the roundels in the painting. These include Tillinara, Yumari, the rockhole at Innanki, Kalutarra, a site west of the Kintore Ranges, and Mulka. The red line meandering down the centre of the canvas represents Nuntyul while the parallel curved sections show creeks, trees and spinifex grass.
 
This painting is sold with an accompanying Papunya Tula Artists certificate