YUNALA, 2002
RAY JAMES TJANGALA
synthetic polymer paint on linen
182.0 x 152.5 cm
inscribed verso: artist's name, size and Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd catalogue number RJ0205228
Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, Alice Springs
Acquired from the above in 2003
Collection of Stephen Bush, New South Wales
This painting is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd which reads in part, ‘In mythological times, a large group of Tingari men camped at this site before continuing their travels further east to Pinari, north-west of Kintore. While in the area they gathered edible roots of the bush banana or silky pear vine Marsdenia australis which is plentiful in the region.’
Born in the desert, Ray James Tjangala is the son of Anatjari Tjampitjinpa, one of the founding painters of the Papunya movement. Tjangala was a young boy when in 1963 he and his family encountered one of Jeremy Long's Northern Territory Welfare patrols at the Wudungunya Rockhole near the Canning Stock Route. Not long after they moved to the settlement of Papunya. When the homelands program began Tjangala moved to Kiwirrkura across the border into Western Australia. He first began painting for Papunya Tula in the early 1990s and he was included in the major retrospective Papunya Tula; Genesis and Genius held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2000. This painting characterised by his interlocking grid design depicts the site of Yunala west of the Kiwirrkura community.
Ray James Tjangala, together with Joseph Jurra Tjapaljarri and Bobby West Tjupurrula, was invited to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, New York, to construct an elaborate ground painting to coincide with the exhibition Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya, 10 January - 5 April, 2009. Throughout 2009, the exhibition will tour the United States of America.