Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri

Muruntji (formerly Family Bush Tucker Dreaming)

1972

This painting was was initially given the title Family Bush Tucker Dreaming. According to Geoffrey Bardon’s original documentation:

The story is one of domestic happiness where, in accordance with Aboriginal custom, each member of the family has his or her own fire. They are warm in the night’s coolness, sitting inside windbreaks and eating bush raisins, yams and witchetty grubs, and body paint indicates that they are celebrating a bush tucker ritual. The undulating band and pattern represents the earth where the grubs are found, the grubs being shown by simple curves.

When asked to replicate the image in 1991, Mick Namarari described it as being Muruntji, a site associated with the ancestral Snake Woman, Kutungu. Rather than a scene of family bliss, this would suggest that it is a painting of a group of boys who, after playing near the site, found Kutungu asleep and raped her. Mick Namarari described the two undulating bands as referencing the digging stick with which Kutungu later killed the boys in revenge, surrounded by U-shapes representing women.

I paint real slow, no rush, slow.

MICK NAMARARI TJAPALTJARRI

Language Group: Pintupi
Dates: 1927-1998

Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri was one of the founding artists at Papunya. When the painting movement started in 1971, Mick Namarari’s work immediately stood out, as it signaled a departure from the traditional iconography of Pintupi painting, which included concentric circles and lines. He developed an abstract style on more expansive canvases, using striking undotted lines in his designs. In addition to varied stylistic approaches, he also had a diverse range of subjects, such as the site of Tjunginpa and a Dingo Tjukurrpa site at Nyumanu, southeast of Kintore. In 1991 he won the National Aboriginal Art Award and in 1994 he was awarded co-winner of the Alice Prize and inaugural winner of the Red Ochre Award. Throughout his career, he made over 700 paintings. After his passing, two of Mick Namarari's children, Angelina Nungarrayi and Peter Tjungurrayi, started painting in a style reminiscent of their father’s. In 2017 Mick Namarari was given a solo retrospective titled The Mysteries that Remain at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection. He is the subject of a major monograph, The Master from Marnpi, by Alec O'Halloran.

MICK NAMARARI TJAPALTJARRI, Muruntji (formerly Family Bush Tucker Dreaming), 1972

Synthetic polymer paint on composition board. 20 1/8 × 20 1/8 in. (51.1 × 51.1 cm). Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, Gift of John W. and Maria T. Kluge, 2008. 2008.0003.002.

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