Warakurna Artists Collaborative Sets the Pace in the Secondary Market

Warakurna Artists Collaborative Piece Sets the Pace in the Secondary Market
Bonham's Auction.

Carol Maanyatja Golding (born circa 1930), Pirrmangka Reid Napanangka (born circa 1940), Eunice Yunurupa Porter (born 1948) and Nancy Nyanyarna Jackson (born circa 1954)

Kungkarangkalpa Tjukurrpa (Seven Sisters Dreaming)
bears artists names, year and Warakurna Artists catalogue numbers 587-06.1-4 on the reverse
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
213 x 152cm (83 7/8 x 59 13/16in).


Sold for AU$60,000 inclusive of Buyer's Premium

Footnote:
PROVENANCE:
Painted in 2006
Warakurna Artists, Western Australia
Private collection

EXHIBITED:
The 23rd Telstra National Aborignal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, Northern Territory, 11 August - 22 October 2006
Power and Beauty: Indigenous Art Now, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Victoria, 17 November 2007- 10 March 2008

LITERATURE:
Nicholas Rothwell, 'National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award, Lessons from a Vanishing World', The Australian, 14 August, 2006, p.18.
Judith Ryan, Power and Beauty: Indigenous Art Now, Melbourne: Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2007, pp.46-47, p.47 (illus.).
Heide Calender, November 2007 - February 2008, Melbourne: Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2007 (illus.).
Vogue Living Australia, November/December 2007, p.166 (illus.).
Art Almanac, February 2008, p.58 (illus.).


The Seven Sisters Dreaming is a major women's creation narrative that links a number of desert groups over a vast area of land, from around present day Roebourne on the coast of Western Australia through the lands of the Martu people on the Canning Stock Route, east to central Australia and well beyond. The Dreaming is a universal creation story that manifests itself in several guises from culture to culture and it is known in the Western world as the constellation of Orion and the Pleiades.There are several versions across Aboriginal Australia; among the Anindilyakwa of Groote Eylandt and the Yolngu of northeastern Arnhem Land for example, the narrative tells of a man or a group of men who are variously described as fishermen in their canoes who chase a group of women.

Across the western deserts the setting is land-based rather than aquatic. The core elements of the epic narrative remain constant, however there is considerable variation in detail from group to group. The Ngaanyatjarra people tell of the Kungarangkalpa travelling from Wanarn to Warakurna, and through Munguri near Tjukurla (near Lake Hopkins, heading towards Kintore). Their version of the epic as reflected in the painting and the numerous sites the Sisters visited, tells of a man (Yula) who spied the Seven Sisters while they were digging deep waterholes for drinking water. He wanted to take the younger sister for his wife but the sisters ran away and hid from him. They crossed the country passing through sand hills and dug for water as the creeks were dry. In other versions of the narrative the man transforms himself into a variety of bush food and animals the women cook but cannot eat. To escape his advances, the Sisters transform themselves into the cluster of stars but the man follows them into the heavens and the chase is revealed each night in the constellation of Orion and the Pleiades.

Kungkarangkalpa Tjukurrpa, 2006, displays a number of characteristics common to art making in traditional circumstances, from the mundane to the sacred. The depiction of the various sites visited by the Seven Sisters in their attempts to escape the advances of the old man is suggestive of the sand drawings desert women make as part of story-telling and instruction. In fact the women of Warakurna carry long strands of wire looped at each end with which to draw in the sand; these are called 'story wires.' On the other hand, the collaborative nature of the painting reflects the making of sacred ground paintings in related ceremonies.

For a comparable large scale collaborative painting of the same subject according to the Martu people to the west of Warakurna, see Minyipuru (Seven Sisters), 2007, by Muni Rita Simpson, Rosie Williams and Dulcie Gibbs in the collection of the National Museum of Australia, illustrated in Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route, Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2010, p.54.

Wally Caruana

This painting is sold with accompanying Warakurna Artists documentation and photocopies of the publications in which the work was illustrated or referenced.

Text courtesy Bonhams