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Aboriginal bark painting new guinea tribal art

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David Malangi Painting

Mortuary Feast designThe design depicts the funeral of the first man, the hunter Gurrmirringu. The central figure represents the deceased Hunter. The crosshatching on the body was traditionally painted by senior men before burial. A song group is sitting around the body playing the didgeridoo and beating the clapsticks. As they paint the body they sing the story of the deceased who was the great hunter Gurrumirringu.The painting also tells of how Gurrumirringu died. One day he had an exceptional day hunting, killing a turtle, wallaby, emu, and many other small creatures as well as gathering wild yams and fruit. As dusk fell he decided to camp under a tree by a waterhole. He lit a fire cut up the wallaby ( see the dissected pieces in the painting ) and started cooking it on the coals. Unfortunately, the tree Gurrumirringu settled under was an evil tree. This tree had enticed a venomous brown snake to live at its base. The Whiteberry tree hated Gurrumirringu, and so persuaded the brown snake to slither out of hiding. The brown snake bites the great hunter on the ankle resulting in instant death.This image depicts the first death of the Manyarrngu people and explains how Gurrmirringu’s spirit came to watch over them.

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Patrick (Olodoodi) Tjungurrayi (c.1935–2017) was one of the leading painters of Western Desert Art, uniquely bridging the artistic traditions of Balgo art and Pintupi art. Beginning his career with Warlayirti Artists before later painting for Papunya Tula Artists, he developed a highly individual style that combined Balgo's vibrant colour with the disciplined geometry of the Pintupi tradition. The result was a powerful body of work that transformed ancient Tingari narratives into luminous contemporary abstraction. Winner of the inaugural Western Australian Indigenous Art Award in 2008, Patrick is regarded as one of Australia's most important Aboriginal artists.

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George Tjangala (c.1925–1989) was an important early painter of Western Desert art and a senior Pintupi artist associated with Papunya Tula Artists. Beginning to paint around 1976, he transformed sacred Tingari narratives, Water, Goanna, Hare Wallaby and Bush Tucker Dreamings into powerful geometric compositions that reflected his deep connection to Country around Lingakurra, Mutakutjirri and Marnpi. His paintings were included in the landmark Dreamings exhibition in the United States and are now represented in major Australian collections. Explore his biography, painting style and significant works on my website.

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Street Art: Aboriginal Wandjina

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Old Tutuma Tjapangati (c.1909–1987) was one of the founding artists of Papunya Art and a senior Pintupi ceremonial leader whose cultural authority helped shape the birth of Western Desert Art. Although only a small number of his paintings survive, they are among the most historically important works of the early Papunya movement, preserving one of the closest visual links between traditional ceremonial designs, body painting and the first Papunya Boards. His paintings offer a rare insight into the moment when ancient Tjukurrpa was first translated into contemporary acrylic painting. Explore his biography, painting style and surviving works on my website.

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Eubena Nampitjin (c.1921–2013) was one of the greatest painters of Western Desert art and the leading woman artist of the Balgo movement. A senior law woman, respected cultural leader and winner of the 1998 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, she transformed the sandhills, rockholes and ancestral landscapes of the Great Sandy Desert into luminous paintings of extraordinary colour and atmosphere. Her expressive brushwork and radiant palette helped redefine contemporary Aboriginal painting and established her as one of Australia's most celebrated Indigenous artists. Explore her biography, painting style and major works on my website.

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Papunya Art emerged in Central Australia in the early 1970s and became the foundation of the contemporary Western Desert Art movement. Drawing on much older traditions of ceremony, Country, body painting and sand designs, Papunya artists transformed ancient visual languages into one of the most important movements in Australian art.

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Makinti Napanangka (c.1930–2011) transformed Western Desert art by bringing the visual language of Pintupi women's ceremony into contemporary painting. Inspired by ceremonial body painting, dancing and woven hair-string skirts, her bold gestural brushwork and radiant colour created a style unlike any other artist of the Papunya Tula movement. Winner of the 2008 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Makinti is widely regarded as one of Australia's greatest Indigenous painters. Explore her biography, painting style and major works on my website.

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Old Tutuma Tjapangati (also known as Old Tutama Tjapangati) (c. 1909–1987) was one of the senior Pintupi ceremonial leaders who helped establish the Papunya painting movement during its earliest years. Born at Wirrilinya, southwest of Lake Hopkins near the Western Australian border, he brought a lifetime of cultural knowledge to the first Papunya Boards. Although failing eyesight limited his artistic output, the small number of surviving paintings are historically important and among the rarest works by the founding generation of Papunya artists.

This illustrated biography explores Old Tutuma Tjapangati's life, painting style, the public stories depicted in his artworks, and why authenticated early Papunya Boards are highly sought after by collectors of Aboriginal art.

Read more: https://www.aboriginal-bark-paintings.com/old-tutuma-tjapangati/

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Nosepeg Tjupurrula (c. 1915–1990) was one of the founding artists of the Papunya painting movement, but he was first and foremost a senior Pintupi ceremonial leader. Raised entirely within the traditional nomadic life of the Western Desert, he became one of Central Australia's most respected authorities on Aboriginal Law, played a key role in the Homelands movement, worked as an interpreter during early government contact with remote Pintupi families, and helped establish the Papunya art movement in 1971. Because painting was never his primary role, authentic works by Nosepeg are exceptionally rare and among the most historically significant of the early Papunya Boards.

This illustrated biography explores Nosepeg Tjupurrula's remarkable life, his role in the birth of contemporary Aboriginal art, his distinctive painting style, and why his surviving paintings are so highly sought after by collectors of Western Desert Art.

Read more: https://www.aboriginal-bark-paintings.com/nosepeg-tjupurrula/

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Eubena Nampitjin (c.1921–2013) was one of the greatest painters of Western Desert art and the leading woman artist of the Balgo movement. A senior law woman, respected cultural leader and winner of the 1998 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, she transformed the sandhills, rockholes and ancestral landscapes of the Great Sandy Desert into luminous paintings of extraordinary colour and atmosphere. Her expressive brushwork and radiant palette helped redefine contemporary Aboriginal painting and established her as one of Australia's most celebrated Indigenous artists. Explore her biography, painting style and major works on my website.

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Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri is one of the leading painters of Western Desert Art, transforming the sacred geography of Pintupi Country into mesmerising fields of rhythmic dots, diamonds and rectilinear grids. Rather than functioning as maps, his paintings express Country as it is understood through Tjukurrpa—a living ancestral reality that continues to shape the landscape. Their remarkable precision, optical depth and restrained palettes have established Warlimpirrnga as one of the most influential contemporary Aboriginal artists. Explore his biography, painting style and the anthropological meaning behind his work on my website.

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Groote Eylandt bark painting of a scorpion

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Naata Nungurrayi (c.1932–2021) transformed Western Desert art by reinventing the rolling sandhills of the Gibson Desert as one of the defining abstract motifs of Australian painting. Through flowing bands of colour, delicate dotting and remarkable painterly restraint, she created luminous aerial landscapes that balance deep Pintupi ceremonial knowledge with exceptional harmony and rhythm. Her paintings evoke the vastness, light and quiet power of Country, establishing her as one of the finest women artists of the Papunya Tula movement. Explore her biography, painting style and major works on my website.

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Dinny Nolan Tjampitjinpa is one of the great senior Warlpiri artists of the Papunya movement. Best known for his powerful Water Dreaming and Rainmaking paintings, he combined deep ceremonial authority with a distinctive visual language of concentric circles, flowing lines and rhythmic dotting that mapped Country from above. Beyond his paintings, Dinny helped introduce Aboriginal ceremonial art to a wider audience by creating one of the first public ground paintings outside Central Australia in 1981. Explore his life, painting style and significant works on my website.

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Makinti Napanangka (c.1930–2011) transformed Western Desert art by bringing the visual language of Pintupi women's ceremony into contemporary painting. Inspired by ceremonial body painting, dancing and woven hair-string skirts, her bold gestural brushwork and radiant colour created a style unlike any other artist of the Papunya Tula movement. Winner of the 2008 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Makinti is widely regarded as one of Australia's greatest Indigenous painters. Explore her biography, painting style and major works on my website.

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Aboriginal art: Dorothy Napangardi was one of the most important artists associated with Warlpiri Art and the broader Western Desert Art movement. Her celebrated paintings of Mina Mina use intricate networks of dots and flowing lines to evoke the ancestral journeys of Warlpiri women across Country.