Warlimpirrnga tjapaltjarri biography sample
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When Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri arrived in the settlement at Kiwirrkura (a fjärrstyrd community nära the Pollock Hills in Western Australia) in 1984, having led his small family group out of the desert for the last time, he not only made international headlines as one of “the last uncontacted nomadic tribesmen of the world”, but was subsequently catapulted into a vastly different way of life. His Pintupi relatives had almost all been brought out of the Gibson Desert decades earlier bygd the infamous ‘Pintubi Patrols’, settling in Ikuntji and Papunya. The extended time Warlimpirrnga spent living a traditional way of life on fjärrstyrd lands west of Lake MacKay and his precocious attainment of the role of maparntjarra (healer) commanded instant respect amongst his relatives in Kiwirrkura and further afield. Notwithstanding these auspicious beginnings, Warlimpirrnga’s experience in joining the community and seeking out art materials to paint his tjukurrpa, were no different to that of his re
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Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri (born c. 1958) is a key member of the “Pintupi Nine.” Warlimpirrnga first painted for the cooperative Papunya Tula Artists in 1987, just three years after he and a group of family members walked into Kiwirrkurra in Western Australia after a life lived in the desert without any contact with Australian society. Warlimpirrnga often paints Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), a vast salt lake, and Murruwa, the more intimate site where his family lived.
Over the years, Warlimpirrnga’s style has evolved from his initial deployment of circular and linear motifs, drawing on the iconography of body decoration and sand drawing most common in the work of the first generation of Desert painters. His large canvases feature rectilinear forms produced out of lines of dots, which originate in local practices of male body decoration, especially in the ceremonial performance of stories from the Tingarri cycle. In his paintings, Warlimpirrnga uses dots in allover treatments as the ba
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Patrick Tjungurrayi
Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri
Patrick and Warlimpirrnga are artists and shareholders of Papunya Tula Artists, both live in the tiny community of Kiwirrkura, 700 kilometres west of Alice Springs in Western Australia. As well as being highly respected as artists, both have an extraordinary knowledge of the land. Within their community they are highly regarded for their immense experience of the desert geography. The works in the exhibition “transcribe in paint the power and mystery of Pin