Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri AO

Rain Dreaming at Mount Denison

1989

By the end of the 1980s, Clifford Possum Tjapaljtarri was the biggest star of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement. Gallerist John Weber was determined that Possum should be included in the exhibition Papunya Tula: Contemporary Paintings from Australia's Western Desert which opened in New York in May 1989. With the help of Rodney Gooch of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association, Possum was convinced to produce this important painting.

He put considerable energy into the painting and was extremely proud of the result. It shows a part of the Ngapa Tjukurrpa; two Rain ancestors, depicted as U shapes in the center, are singing a mighty storm into being. Around them, squiggly shapes represent the mud flats drying after the rains. The bird tracks represent an ancestral Bush Turkey foraging for seeds exposed by the flood.

That Dreaming been all the time. From our early days, before the European people came up. That Dreaming carry on. Old people carry on this law business, schooling, for the young people.

CLIFFORD POSSUM TJAPALTJARRI

Language Group: Anmatyerr

Dates: c. 1932-2002

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri was one of the last men to join Papunya Tula Artists and the first Aboriginal Australian artist to gain international fame. Clifford Possum was born on Napperby Station in the eastern portion of Anmatyerr Country, where his family had moved following the Coniston Massacre of the mid-1920s. His mother also raised Bill Stockman Tjapaltjarri whose own mother had been killed in the massacre. In 1976, he was selected to paint for the BBC film-makers of ‘Desert Dreamers,’ in which he collaborated with his brother, Tim Leura. Clifford Possum also served as chairperson of Papunya Tula Artists during the early 1980s. His solo exhibition held in 1988 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London was the first solo exhibition by an Aboriginal Australian artist in a major international institution. Over the next decade, Clifford Possum would become the most widely traveled Aboriginal artist of his generation and an ambassador for Aboriginal art around the world. In 1996, he was the subject of the major monograph, The Art of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri by Vivien Johnson and in 2002 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia.

CLIFFORD POSSUM TJAPALTJARRI, Rain Dreaming at Mount Denison, 1989

Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. 50 x 103 1/2 in. (127 x 262.89 cm). Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, Gift of John W. Kluge, 1997.
1989.7012.004.

Christopher Hodges, Helen Eager and Clifford Possum on the roof of the Australia Council Studio, Green Street, New York, 1988.

Photo by Christopher Hodges.

Clifford Possum in New York City.

Photo by Christopher Hodges.

Helen Eager and Clifford Possum in New York, 1988.

Photo by Christopher Hodges.

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri 'Warlugulong' 1977 at the National Gallery of Australia.

For comparison, watch this video about paintings by Clifford Possum.

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri 'Bush-fire II' 1972 at the National Gallery of Australia.

For comparison, watch another video about paintings by Clifford Possum.

ABC Broadcast About Resurfaced Clifford Possum Painting.

See an early work by Clifford Possum, rediscovered in 2011.

Are you related to this artist? Are you a scholar of artwork from the Papunya Tula movement? Please contact us at kluge-ruhe@virginia.edu if you would like to add something to this page or see something that is missing or incorrect.