Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi

Rumya Tjukurrpa (Goanna Dreaming at Wantaritja) (formerly Patterns in the Sand)

1980

This painting was included in the exhibition Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia in 1988 in New York. As a traditional healer, Lungkarta was highly respected for his deep ceremonial knowledge, but due to his lack of English language skills, the complex narratives in his paintings were often not recorded. This painting was previously titled Patterns in Sand. When undertaking research on this work for this exhibition, anthropologist Fred Myers, who lived with the artist in the 1970s, recognized one of his signature motifs: the Goanna Dreaming. When the Goanna ancestor was looking for a wife, he circled a hole and left patterns in the sand. These patterns, like those seen in this painting, are recreated in ceremonies that reenact this event.

Language Group: Pintupi
Dates: c. 1912-1987

Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi was born at Walukarritjinya, south of Lake Macdonald. He was one of the last original members to join Papunya Tula Artists. As an artist, he developed a particular style using filigree dotting patterns and later overlapping circles to produce an effect of multiplicity. Fred Myers recalls discussions with Lungkarta in which he explained painting as always in relationship to the Pintupi exile from their homelands, and that paintings themselves were a means of ceremony and experience of the land. Shorty’s daughters, Wintjiya Morgan (Reid) Napaltjarri and Brenda Napaltjarri, have also painted for Papunya Tula Artists.

SHORTY LUNGKARTA TJUNGURRAYI, Rumya Tjukurrpa (Goanna Dreaming at Wantaritja) (formerly Patterns in the Sand), 1980

Synthetic polymer paint on composition board. 23 15/16 × 25 15/16 in. (60.8 × 65.9 cm). Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, Gift of Maria Tussi Kluge, 2012. 2012.0003.001.

Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi performing a public ceremony at Yayayi, 1974.

Photo by Fred Myers.

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