Uta Uta Tjangala, 1926-1990, TINGARI CYCLE

synthetic polymer paint on composition board  
bears artist's name, location, Papunya Tula Artists catalogue number U731179, an annoted diagram and a description of the story depicted on Papunya Tula Artists label on the reverse  
77 BY 59CM  

Provenance: 
Acquired from Aboriginal Arts & Crafts, MLC Tower, Woden ACT in 1974 Private collection

Cf. For an early related drawing by the artist see his Drawing 2, 1971, in G. Bardon and J. Bardon, Papunya, A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2004, p.96, (illus.).
 
The work was painted in November 1973 during a period of intense ritual activity associated with the Tingari ancestors at Yayayi, the camp that the Pintupi people had established some forty kilometres west of Papunya. At the time, the anticipation felt by Uta Uta and other Pintupi elders about the impending return to their homelands far to the west seems to have been the catalyst for the frequency of ceremonial performances and for the production of a large number of paintings by Uta Uta, Anatjarri No.III Tjakamarra (c.1939-1992) and Charlie Tjararu Tjungurrayi (c.1925-1999) in particular. For his part, Uta Uta created several works about his country, both of Yumari and of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay). (Fred Myers, Painting Culture: the making of an Aboriginal high art, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002, pp.106-111
 
The central roundel in this painting represents a cave at Wilkinkarra where ceremonies take place. The larger surrounding roundels indicate the men's camps while the women's camps lie along the vertical in the painting. A sketch of this painting, or one very similar, is reproduced in Myers 2002, p. 110, Painting 48, and in Morphy, H. and M. Smith Boles (eds.), Art from the Land: Dialogues with the Kluge-Ruhe collection of Australian Aboriginal art, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA, 1999, p. 248, plate 8.36