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Ronnie Tjampitjinpa
Biography:
Ronnie Tjampitjinpa is one of
Australia’s most important living Aboriginal Artists.
View
Ronnie
Tjampitjinpa
Curriculum Vitae
page
366
Encyclopedia Aboriginal Artists dictionary of biographies.
Ronnie began painting at the beginning
of the Papunya artistic movement around and in 1988 won the Alice
Springs Art Prize. His works follow the Pintupi style, which depicts
dreamtime and the landscape by joining together strong circles with
connecting lines. Ronnie has exhibited extensively throughout the world
and is included n all major aboriginal art collections.
Ronnie Tjampitjinpa
work is
represented by major collections throughout the world, his paintings are
in very high demand sought after by Australian and international art
collectors as well as Auction Houses.
Ronnie
Tjampitjinpa was born some time around 1943 in the region near Muyinnga,
about 100 km west of the Kintore Ranges in Western Australia (and
approximately 500 km west of Alice Springs).
His family
traveled extensively across Pintupi territory, moving through this
region and also around Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) which straddles the
Western Australia - Northern Territory border.
Ronnie
Tjampitjinpa
was
initiated into Aboriginal Law at Yumari, near his birthplace.
Ronnie began painting at the beginning of the Papunya artistic movement
around and in 1988 won the Alice Springs Art Prize. His works follow the
Pintupi style, which depicts dreamtime and the landscape by joining
together strong circles with connecting lines. Ronnie has exhibited
extensively throughout the world and is included in all major Australian
and international art collections.
Ronnie resides with his family at Kintore, an aboriginal community that
was established in 1981.
Originally
Ronnie came in from the bush at Yuendumu and later joined relatives
living in Papunya, where he worked as a labourer, helping with the
fencing of the airfield. He started painting around 1971 at the time
that the desert art movement began in Papunya and over several years he
moved between Papunya, Yuendumu and Mt Doreen Station. Ronnie's work
follows the Pintupi style of strong circles joined together by
connecting lines relating to the people, country and the Dreamtime. The
primary images in Ronnie's work are based on the Tingari Cycle which is
a secret song cycle sacred to initiated men.
The Tingari are Dreamtime
Beings who travelled across the landscape performing ceremonies to
create and shape the country associated with Dreaming sites. The Tingari
ancestors gathered at these sites for Maliera (initiation) ceremonies.
The sites take the form of, and are located at, significant rockholes,
sand hills, sacred mountains and water soakages in the western desert.
Tingari may be poetically interpreted as song-line paintings relating to
the songs (of the people) and creation stories (of places) in Pintupi
mythology.
Ronnie can be considered amongst the first wave of artists
effectively linking such ancient stories with modern mediums. During his
time at Papunya Ronnie talked of returning to his traditional country.
This became possible when Kintore was established in 1981 and Ronnie
moved there with his family shortly afterwards. He has been a committed
artist since his earliest involvement with the central desert art
movement and has since emerged as one of the region's major painters.
Today, Ronnie remains an important influence on a new generation of
painters. Ronnie's works first appeared in Papunya Tula exhibitions
during the 1970s, then in commercial art galleries in Sydney and
Melbourne throughout the 1980s, including successive exhibitions at
Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi from 1987 to 1990. In 1988, he won the Alice
Springs Art Prize and he had his first solo exhibition in Melbourne in
1989. The artist was later selected for inclusion in major
representative Aboriginal survey shows including: Flash Pictures at the
Australian National Gallery; Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami; and
other noteworthy exhibitions in Paris, Moscow, St Petersburg, Düsseldorf
and Munich. His work is held in many public galleries and private
collections, including the National Gallery of Australia and all the
state galleries. (Source: Internet and Aboriginal Artists of the
Western Desert: a biographical dictionary by Vivien Johnson 1994).
Stories from the Tingari
Cycle
Stories from the Tingari Cycle, a secret song cycle sacred to initiated
men, are the subject of many of Ronnie's paintings. The Tingari are a
group of ancestral spirit or Dreamtime beings who brought law and
culture to the people of the Western Desert, travelling over vast
distances. In the course of their many adventures and misadventures,
they performed ceremonies to create or even become the physical features
of the sites they visited, such as rocky outcrops, waterholes, trees,
salt lakes, and ochre deposits. Ronnie Tjampitjinpa's work is highly
characteristic of Pintupi art, using simple, bold, geometric designs,
often made up of maze-like circles or a central bull's-eye connected by
strong lines. There is a mysterious, entrancing nature to these
paintings, where time and place are melded in the eternal stories of
Ronnie's Dreaming. Their complexity may not always be clear to the
outsider, but they reward further study. Ronnie can be considered one of
the first major artists to have linked the painting of these
'song-lines' or 'travelling Dreamings' with the use of modern materials.
Ronnie Tjampitjinpa (B.1943-) PAINTINGS:
Stories from the Tingari Cycle, a secret song cycle sacred to initiated
men, are the subject of many of Ronnie's paintings. The Tingari are a
group of ancestral spirit or Dreamtime beings who brought law and
culture to the people of the Western Desert, travelling over vast
distances. In the course of their many adventures and misadventures,
they performed ceremonies to create or even become the physical features
of the sites they visited, such as rocky outcrops, waterholes, trees,
salt lakes, and ochre deposits. Ronnie Tjampitjinpa's work is highly
characteristic of Pintupi art, using simple, bold, geometric designs,
often made up of maze-like circles or a central bull's-eye connected by
strong lines. There is a mysterious, entrancing nature to these
paintings, where time and place are melded in the eternal stories of
Ronnie's Dreaming. Their complexity may not always be clear to the
outsider, but they reward further study. Ronnie can be considered one of
the first major artists to have linked the painting of these
'song-lines' or 'travelling Dreamings' with the use of modern materials.
Exhibitions
Ronnie's works first appeared in Papunya Tula exhibitions during the
1970s, then in commercial art galleries in Sydney and Melbourne
throughout the 1980s, including successive exhibitions at Gallery
Gabrielle Pizzi from 1987 to 1990. In 1988, he won the Alice Springs Art
Prize and had his first solo exhibition in Melbourne in 1989. Ronnie
Tjampitjinpa's work is represented in many public galleries and private
collections in Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia
and all Australian State galleries. His work is also held outside
Australia in many private and public collections.
Ronnie's
work
has been shown in international exhibitions many times and he is
represented in major private collections such as the Donald Khan
Collection and the Kelton Foundation in the United States of America. He
prospered as an artist during the late 1980’s winning the Alice Springs
Art Prize in 1988. The following year he travelled to Melbourne for his
first one-man show at the Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi. Subsequently he was
included in ‘Australian Perspecta 1993’ at the Art Gallery of NSW. From
1993 Ronnie was Chairman of the Kintore Outstation Council, residing at
his outstation at Redbank (Ininti). His work was displayed prominently
in Sydney at the Jinta Gallery in 1998 in their ‘Pintupi Men’
exhibition.
These successes have established him as one of the masters of desert
art. He was there at the beginning and will continue to work strongly
into the next century. Ronnie Tjampitjinpa is the personification of a
linkage to the traditional ways and beliefs that certainly will be
modified by the current generation of painters. Whilst his works may be
regarded as ‘contemporary art’ in the great galleries of the world we
should remember that his beliefs and background exemplify the ancient
nature of his people. His is one of the last of the genuine desert
nomads. Consequently his art takes on a meaning and importance well
beyond the expectations aroused when we are confronted with visual art
of our own Euro-centric culture.
AWARDS:
1988 -
the
Alice Springs Art Prize
COLLECTIONS:
National Gallery of Australia Canberra;
Artbank Sydney;
Art Gallery of New South Wales Sydney;
Art Gallery of South
Australia Adelaide;
National Gallery of Victoria
Melbourne; Art Gallery of Western
Australia Perth; Campbelltown City Art
Gallery; Donald Kahn Collection Lowe Art Museum University of Miami
USA;
Araluen Arts Centre Alice Springs; Holmes`a Court collection, Perth;
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
Darwin; Queensland
Art Gallery
Brisbane;
Darwin Supreme Court; Musee des Arts Africans
et Oceaniens Paris FRANCE; Michael Hollow collection Alice Springs;
private and corporate collections around the world.
SOURCE:
Internet; Bardon, Geoffrey & Bardon, James:
Papunya: A Place Made After The Story (Miegunyah
Press, 2004); Graham Lloyd D: The Nature and
Origins of the Tingari Cycle, (AusAnthrop 2002);
Johnson, Vivien: Aboriginal Artists of the
Western Desert: A Biographical Dictionary (Crafstman
House, 1994); Kleinert, Sylvia & Neale, Margo
(eds.): The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art
and Culture (Oxford University Press, 2000) ;
Kreczmanski, Janusz B & Birnberg, Margo (eds.):
Aboriginal Artists: Dictionary of Biographies:
Central Desert, Western Desert & Kimberley
Region (JB Publishing Australia, Marleston,
2004) |
