(Untitled)

Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa was a stockman who became a pivotal figure in launching the Western Desert painting movement at Papunya. He grew up northwest of Mparntwe (Alice Springs) with his cousins, the future artists Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri. He moved to Papunya in the 1950s and was painting there in a style based on traditional mark-making before the movement began. In 1971 he led the ‘painting men’ who created the Papunya School’s Honey Ant mural, a seminal project in the emergence of contemporary Western Desert painting.

This work – completed about the same time as the mural – was one of the movement’s first, painted on reused board, like most early Papunya works. It includes detailed depictions of ceremonial poles, headdresses, body-paint designs and ground painting. Such explicit representations of ceremonial practices were short-lived, to be quickly replaced by methods of subtle concealment, these heightening Western Desert painting’s appeal.

Barry Patton, Tarnanthi Writer & Researcher