Title
Untitled
circa 1971
Artist
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Details
- Place where the work was made
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Papunya
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Northern Territory
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Australia
- Date
- circa 1971
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- synthetic polymer paint on hardboard
- Dimensions
- 60.5 x 35.0 cm board; 62.1 x 36.8 x 4.4 cm frame
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased with funds provided by the Katherine Mabel Reid Bequest 1998
- Location
- South Building, lower level 1, 20th-century galleries
- Accession number
- 50.1998
- Copyright
- © Estate of Uta Uta Tjangala. Licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd
- Artist information
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Uta Uta Tjangala
Works in the collection
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About
In the late 1950s, Uta Uta Tjangala led his family to Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff). It was his first contact with white people. He was later to move to the nearby government settlement of Papunya where, in 1971, he became one of the founding members of the Western Desert painting movement.
Uta Uta's work is characterised by its explosive energy, in which symbolic elements appear restlessly on the surface of the painting. His paintings pulse with heroic energy and rarely sit comfortably within the confines of a rectangular format. He was one of the most formidable and important of the Papunya Tula artists, with the capacity to tap the raw energy of the Tjukurrpa and give it visual form. Uta Uta was central to the establishment of the first phase painting at Papunya, when vivid representations of ceremonial details were laid down on hardboard. He was also an important innovator in the rapid stylisation of Pintupi painting in the second phase of its development (during 1972-75), and was one of the artists who established the conventions of Pintupi painting. He was, paradoxically, also the artist who pushed hardest at the boundaries of those conventions, disrupting a format reading of his painting with incursions of idiosyncratic visual elements or vibrant, 'non-traditional' colours.
The inspiration for much of Uta Uta's work was the ancestral story of the illicit coupling of an old man and his mother-in-law at Yumari. The standing stones and trench-like rockholes at the site reappear in his paintings as bold Freudian iconography, and provide an exciting narrative quality to his work.
Uta Uta travelled widely in the late 1970s, visiting Aboriginal communities on the fringes of the Western Desert to advocate the mobilisation of desert people back to their homelands. In the mid-1980s he established an outstation at Muyin, in his traditional country.
Two of his monumental canvases, 'Yumari', 1981 and 'Old Man at Yumari', 1983, were exhibited together in 'Dreamings: Art of Aboriginal Australia' at the Asia Society Galleries, New York in 1988; this exhibition was seminal in gaining international recognition of Aboriginal art. Uta Uta's stature as a major artist was matched by his leadership in important social change amongst Aboriginal communities in the latter half of the twentieth century. Uta Uta Tjangala was a truly remarkable man whose best artwork provides a window to his passionate commitment to his culture, his country and his fierce engagement with life.
John Kean in 'Tradition today: Indigenous art in Australia', Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2004
© Art Gallery of New South Wales
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Places
Where the work was made
Papunya
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Exhibition history
Shown in 3 exhibitions
Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 18 Aug 2000–12 Nov 2000
Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert art, Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, 30 Sep 2011–12 Feb 2012
Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert art, Musee du quai Branly, Paris, 09 Oct 2012–20 Jan 2013
20th-Century galleries, lower level 1 (rehang), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 20 Aug 2022–2023
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Bibliography
Referenced in 6 publications
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Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of New South Wales annual report 1998, 'Collections', pg. 15-19, Sydney, 1998, 16 (colour illus.).
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John Kean, Tradition today: Indigenous art in Australia, 'Uta Uta Tjangala', pg. 144, Sydney, 2004, 144 (colour illus.).
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Hetti Perkins, Art + soul: a journey into the world of Aboriginal art, 'Home + away', pg. 1-86, Carlton, 2010, 10 (colour illus.), 278.
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Hetti Perkins and Hannah Fink (Editors), Papunya Tula: genesis and genius, Sydney, 2000, 28 (colour illus.), 288. no catalogue number
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Judith White (Editor), Look, Melbourne, Jul 2000, 23 (colour illus.).
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Judith White (Editor), Look, Melbourne, Jun 2000, 27 (colour illus.).
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