TINGARI CYCLE

WILLY TJUNGARRAYI

150cm x 204cm

Acrylic on Hand Primed 14oz Dallas Canvas

Year: 2009

Location: Onsite

This significant work, "Tingari Cycle," is a powerful example of Willy Tjungurrayi's esteemed artistic practice. 

Willy Tjungurrayi (born c. 1930 at Patjantja) is a senior Pintupi man, respected elder, and one of the most sought-after painters of the Western Desert art movement. He was one of the original Papunya Tula artists in 1976 and was later recognized as a senior Pintupi painter in the 1980s. Now residing in Walungurru, his work is deeply tied to his ancestral and communal position to paint the sacred and secret Tingari cycle.

Tjungurrayi's paintings often depict stories from the Tingari Dreaming, focusing on the significant sites of Haast's Bluff, Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), and Kaakuratintja (Lake Macdonald). His work explores two primary themes: subjects depicted with dotted roundels (concentric circles) linked by parallel lines, representing the travels and stopping places of the Tingari Men, and a rhythmic repetition of songs associated with the Tjukurrpa (Creation era or Dreaming). More recently, he has explored a minimalist style with hundreds of endless wavy lines in an ochre monochrome shimmer across the canvas, which can be interpreted as sandhills or the fierce hailstorm that killed the ancestral Tingari Men in the Dreamtime.

His work is highly sought after and held in numerous major private and public collections, including the Aboriginal Art Museum, The Netherlands; Artbank, Sydney; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide; and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.