Wangkartu Dreaming: Helicopter Tjungurray & Lucy Yukenbarri

6 DUKE STREET ST. JAMES’SL O N D O N S W 1 Y 6 B NT E L . + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 7 9 3 0 9 3 3 2FA X . + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 7 9 3 0 5 5 7 7i n f o @ w h i t f o r d f i n e a r t . c o mw w w. w h i t f o r d f i n e a r t . c o m

WHITFORDF I N E A R T

Helicopter Covers 20/3/09 16:28

CAZIEL Pages 2012_Whitford 24/04/2012 12:00 Page B

WANGKARTU DREAMING:

HELICOPTER TJUNGURRAYI &

LUCY YUKENBARRI

22nd April – 22nd May 2009

6 DUKE STREET ST. JAMES’S LONDON SW1Y 6BNTEL. +44 (0)20 7930 9332 EMAIL [email protected]

www.whitfordfineart.com


All works are for sale

Helicopter Pages 20/3/09 15:17 Page 1

Front cover: Wangkartu 01, 2003 (cat. no. 12)Back cover : Balgo Pound, a huge natural expanse, originally an inland sea andhome country to Helicopter Tjungurrayi and Lucy Yukenbarri

Fig. 1: Helicopter Tjungurrayi, painting in Balgo, the community where he resides,located on the Northern edge of the Tanami and Great Sandy Deserts`


The Western Desert contemporary art movement is based on the narratives of Tjukurrpa or what

is more widely known as the Dreaming or Dreamtime. A better translation might be the Law, for

these narratives express and regulate the Aboriginal worldview. On one level they explain how the

world is the way it is. The y are repositories of knowledge about animals, plants, f ood, medicine

and history. Their significance is practical rather than mystical, such as providing topographical

descriptions that enabl e one t o find wat er or tr avel across the desert. On another l evel the

narratives show how life should be lived today so that the laws of nature laid down in the ancestral

past are not violat ed. The idea of a deep c ontinuity between the pas t and the pr esent is a

fundamental principle of the Dreaming. It means that contemporary events, no matter how new

and unexpected, must be interpreted in light of the Dreaming.

The Dreaming narratives exist as song cy cles. These cy cles are sung and danc ed during

ceremonies. Western Desert c ontemporary art is lar gely based on body and gr ound designs

painted during these ceremonies, and so are associated with specific Dreaming narratives. The

stories told in these narratives concern the activities and journeys of ancestors across the country

in which the geogr aphical features, flora and fauna are as integral to the s tory as the actual

ancestor. Indeed, each is a manifestation of the other, as are living persons and things today. Thus

a valley or river or road or the storm last night may be the manifestation of the Rainbow Serpent,

made during its journey across the landscape.

One of the tasks of ceremonial leaders—who usually are also artists—is to explain the new in light

of the past. This will often involve the inventions of new Dreaming narratives. These are usually

‘given’ to ceremonial leaders in dreams. This is why Western Desert painting is contemporary art.

Its Dreaming narratives are also about contemporary events, just as its artists are contemporary

manifestations of specific ancestors. Helicopter’s story of becoming a painter is bound up in the

Dreaming and its uses to explain an unusual contemporary event.

When he was ill as a 10-y ear old boy, a helicopter rescued him, taking him away t o the Balgo

mission, an isolated outpost at the edge of the Gr eat Australian Western Desert. This has been

remembered in several narratives told across the desert of a y oung man running in f ear for his

INTRODUCTION


life, being picked up by an e vil Mamu, a large flying beast, taking him in its claws t o carry him

away from his country. It was r emembered this way bec ause it was similar t o the much older

Dreaming story in which the ancestral red-backed Kingfisher had, in Creation time, flown south

from Balgo guiding the marwantu (novices) and rescuing some Kukatja people by placing them

on his back.

Not surprising then, this incr edulous helicopter story named him. It also gav e him a new

perspective on his country that resonates in his repeated use of parallel lines. Being taken away

on the wings of Mamu had shown him his land fr om above. Looking down in f ear from the

helicopter, a vision was sear ed into his memory of wav e after wave of par allel sand dunes,

scarified by wind into the ancient seabed itself.

Helicopter’s life, his paintings and his c areer as an artis t cannot be full y understood without

reference to it – just as Joseph Beuys’ rescue by the nomadic Tartars after a near fatal plane crash

shaped his future as an artis t. Because Helicopter’s experience was interpreted in terms of a

significant Dreaming story, he gained a special s tanding across other desert communities. This

was instrumental to his vocation as a Maparn or shaman, a healer, a mediator between worlds.

If Beuys aspired to be a shaman and modeled his art practice on it, Helicopter was one before he

became a painter.

Helicopter’s paintings c an be appreciated simply on a f ormal level as mesmerizing aes thetic

abstractions, however, knowledge of his s tatus as a shaman and his brush with Mamu, offers

deeper insight into his work. Being a tr aditional healer, he sees into a person’s body to find the

true supernatural cause of an illness. He ‘opens membranes, lengthening and realigning things

into position, straight like a spear to unblock the spirit’. In a similar fashion, Helicopter brings his

country to life in his paintings. In his paintings Helic opter reveals and aligns the bones of his

country, searching for a pulse of ener gy through the radiance of colour vibrations that might

unblock the spirit.

Like many other Western Desert painters, Helicopter developed a highly individualistic and easily

recognizable style. Though Helicopter was in Balgo, ther e is no doubt that he knew about the

Pintupi painters at Papunya who pioneered the Desert painting mo vement in the 1970s. Many

Aborigines at the Balgo mis sion were of Pintupi descent and their relatives, including painters,


would come to visit. Helic opter must have met the l eading artists Uta Uta Tjangalga, Timmy

Payunka Tjapangati and Dinny Nolan, who all spent time in Balgo. By the mid-1980s a dis tinctive

school of Balgo art had been es tablished. Unlike Papunya, the Balgo paint ers were known for

their wild syncr etism, colourful palette and bold s tylistic diversity. There were also f amous

painting couples such as the influential Wimitji Tjapanardi and Eubena Namitjin. In the mid 1960s

Wimitji’s daughter by a previous marriage, Lucy Yukenbari, married Helicopter.

Lucy was a respected senior custodian in her own right, with a vast knowledge of the waterholes

in Wangkartu country in the Great Sandy Desert, where Helicopter was born. Together Helicopter

and Lucy would become the best-known painting couple of the Balgo community. Soon after Lucy

started painting in the late 1980s, Helicopter began helping her complete her canvasses. A quietly

creative artist, she soon developed her own unique style of converging her dotting into thick lines

of pigment and single fields of colour across the canvas. Her iconic use of large black circles to

represent waterholes and soakwaters together with the dis tinctive addition of dark gr een and

blue, gave her work an individual style, unique to desert Aboriginal art.

Helicopter produced his fir st solo canvas in 1994. Whil e still sharing his wif e’s palette, he

immediately set about forging his own style. Their canvasses reflect their different personalities:

her paintings c ontain a s tately organic abundance, his hold a c ourteous distance in the

patternisation, classic rather than effusive, minimal rather than expressionist. His canvasses are

like a macroscopic tapestry of country, in which watering holes and desert dunes have been made

the very grammar of Wangkartu Dreaming.

Whereas Lucy’s paintings are bold and dr amatic, in keeping with the Balgo s tyle, Helicopter’s

mature work differs from the first generation of Balgo artists in an early restraint, lacking in overt

drama, narrative or cultural specificity.

Helicopter and Lucy painted side by side until her death in 2003. Their work has been e xhibited in

Canada, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States and their stature

as artists is cemented and market value reflects an accomplished maturity. Together Helicopter

and Lucy hav e six gr own-up children and a sc ore of gr andchildren. Their daught er Christine

Yukenbarri is also an acclaimed artist.

Erica Izett, former Art Coordinator, Warlayiriti Artists, Balgo, Western Australia


Fig. 2: Wunda Ceremonial Warfare Shield, Wangkartu, Great Sandy Desert,carved and painted wood, 67 cm long, c.1950


1. HELICOPTER TJUNGURRAYI (b.1947)

Minyuurpa 1996

Acrylic on canvas120 x 80 cm


Fig. 3: The Great Sandy Desert, Western Australia, where Helicopter has painted



Wangkartu 10 2008




Pikarti Soak 1998

Acrylic on canvas35 x 45.5 cm



Wangkartu 02 2007



Fig. 4: Sunset over The Gibson Desert, Western Australia, home to the Pintupi people,who pioneered the Desert painting movement in the 1970s


5. LUCY YUKENBARRI (c.1934 - 2003)

Marpa 01 2002




Wangkartu 05 2008




Wangkartu 06 2006




Wangkartu 04 2007



Fig. 5: Helicopter Tjungurrayi in Balgo



Wangkartu 07 2007




A Soakage in Sandhill Country 1997




Gathering Seeds for Damper 1998




Wangkartu 01 2003



Fig. 6: The Great Sandy Desert, Western Australia, birth country of Helicopter Tjungurrayi



Wangkartu 11 2008




Wangkartu 09 2008




Marpa 02 2000



Fig. 7: Helicopter Tjungurrayi, painting in Balgo Pound, a natural amphitheatre surrounded by outsidewalls of hollowed-out mountain in Western Australia



Wangkartu 03 2003




Wangkartu 08 2008



HELICOPTER TJUNGURRAYI

1 MINYUURPA

2 WANGKARTU 10

3 PIKARTI SOAK

4 WANGKARTU 02

6 WANGKARTU 05

7 WANGKARTU 06

8 WANGKARTU 04

9 WANGKARTU 07

12 WANGKARTU 01

13 WANGKARTU 11

14 WANGKARTU 09

16 WANGKARTU 03

17 WANGKARTU 08

LUCY YUKENBARRI

5 MARPA 01

10 A SOAKAGE IN SANDHILL COUNTRY

11 GATHERING SEEDS FOR DAMPER

15 MARPA 02

WORKS

All paintings are documented and numbered in the

archives of the Warlayiriti Art Center, Balgo


SOLO EXHIBITIONS2003 Always Together Painting, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne1999 Tjurrnu: Living Water, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS2002 19th NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the

Northern Territory, Darwin2002 Balgo, Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth2001 31st Alice Prize 2001 & Tammy Kingsley Memorial

Award, Araluen Centre, Alice Springs2001 18th NATI Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of

the Northern Territory, Darwin2001 31st Alice Price 2001, Araluen Centre, Alice Springs2000 Outlandish Dreams II, John Ruskin House, UK in

association with Arts Network International2000 17th National ATSI Art Awards, Museum Art Gallery

of the Northern Territory, Darwin2000 Fifth National Indigenous Heritage Art Award & Art

of Place, Old Parliament House, Canberra1999 Aboriginal Art, IHK, Würzburg, Germany1999 Dreaming in Colour: Australian Aboriginal Art from

Balgo, University of Virginia, USA1999 16th National ATSI Art Awards, Museum and Art

Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin1999 East Kimberley Art Awards, Kununurra Arts

Council, Kununurra1999 30th Alice Prize, Araluen Centre, Alice Springs1998 Culture Store, Art Gallery, Rotterdam, The

Netherlands1998 Dreamings, Spazio Pitti Arte, Florence, Italy1998 The Laverty Collection, Museum of Contemporary

Art, Sydney1998 Dreamings, Vlaams-Europees

Conferentiecentrum, Brussels, Belgium1997 Daughters of the Dreaming: Sisters Together

Strong, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth1997 Dreamings, Arnhem, The Netherlands1997 Goteborgs Konstforening, Goteborg, Sweden1997 Innenseite: Projektgruppe Stoffwechsel, Kassel &

Göttingen, Germany

1995 Australia Now: Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Groninger Museum, The Netherlands

1995 Place and Perception, Parliament House Art Collection, Parliament House, Canberra

1994 Wirrimanu: Australian Aboriginal Art from Balgo Hills WA, Canadian Book Launch, Derek Simpkins Gallery of Tribal Art, Vancouver, BC, Canada

1994 11th National Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin

1994 Power of the Land: Masterpieces of Aboriginal Art , National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

1993 Images of Power: Aboriginal Art of the Kimberley , National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

1989 Sixth National Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin

COLLECTIONSNational Gallery of AustraliaNational Gallery of VictoriaArt Gallery of New South WalesArtBank, SydneyBerndt Museum of AnthropologyUniversity of QueenslandCampbelltown City Art GalleryThe Holmes à Court CollectionLaverty CollectionKluge Ruhe Collection, USAParliament House Art CollectionAlice Springs Art Foundation, Araluen CentreAboriginal Art Museum, Utrecht, The NetherlandsKen Thompson and Pierre Marecaux Collection

AWARDS1999 Waringarri Arts Award, East Kimberley Art Awards,

Kununurra Arts Council2000 Highly Commended, 31st Alice Prize, Araluen

Centre, Alice Springs

LUCY YUKENBARRI (c.1934 – 2003)


SOLO AND FAMILY EXHIBITIONS2006 Helicopter Tjungurrayi, Christine Yukenbarri, Imelda

(Guguman) Yukenbarri, Carmel Yukenbarri, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne

2005 Helicopter Tjungurrayi, Christine Yukenbarri, Carmel Yukenbarri, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne

2004 Helicopter Tjungurrayi, Alcaston Gallery at Depot Gallery, Sydney

2003 Always Together Painting, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne1999 Tjurrnu: Living Water, Alcaston Gallery , Melbourne

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS2007 Valid Editions, They Might be Giants , La Trobe

University Art Museum, Bundoora Homestead Art Center.

2007 My Country: Abstract interpretations of Australian Landscape, La Trobe University traveling exhibition Ateneo Art Gallery, Ateneo de Manilla University, Philipines.

2006 Valid Editions, Valid Editions, prints, Bundoora Hometead Art Center

2006 Desert Mob, Aruluen Art Center, Alice Springs2004 29th Annual Shell Fremantle Print Award, Fremantle

Arts Centre, Fremantle2003 Desert Mob, Araluen Centre for Arts, Alice Springs2002 19th NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of

the Northern Territory, Darwin2001 Balgo Works, Staedtische Gallery, Wolsfburg,

Germany2001 Spirituality and Australian Aboriginal Art, Alcaston

Gallery, Madrid, Spain2001 Yvonnou Balgo Exhibition, AMG Gallery, Paris2000 Peintures des Aborigenes d’Australie, Palais des

Congres et des Expositions, Paris, France1999 Aboriginal Art, IHK, Würzburg, Germany1999 Dreaming in Colour: Australian Aboriginal Art from

Balgo, University of Virginia, USA1999 16th National ATSI Art Awards, Museum and Art

Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin

1998 Propositions Australiennes, Arts d’Australie Stéphane Jacob, Paris

1998 Culture Store, Art Gallery, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

1998 Dreamings, Spazio Pitti Arte, Florence, Italy1998 Dreamings, Vlaams-Europees

Conferentiecentrum, Brussels, Belgium1997 Dreamings, Arnhem, The Netherlands1997 Innenseite: Projektgruppe Stoffwechsel, Kassel &

Göttingen, Germany1996 Balgo Hills: Art of the Place, Derek Simpkins

Gallery of Tribal Art, Vancouver, BC, Canada

COLLECTIONSNational Gallery of AustraliaArt Gallery of New South WalesNational Gallery of VictoriaKluge Ruhe Collection, USAGantner Myer CollectionLaverty CollectionEdith Cowan UniversityHarland CollectionRevue du Louvre, ParisAboriginal Art Museum, Utrecht, The NetherlandsKen Thompson and Pierre Marecaux Collection

AWARDS1999 Special Commendation, East Kimberley Art Awards,

Kununurra Arts Council, Kununurra

HELICOPTER TJUNGURRAYI (b.1947)


All paintings © Warlayiriti Artists

Images Figs. 1, 5, 7 © Warlayiriti Artists

Photographs Figs. 1, 3-6 by Tim Acker

Photographs: Figs. 7 and back cover by David Mudgedell

© Whitford Fine Art

Catalogue edited by An Jo Fermon

Produced by Artmedia Press Ltd • London

With thanks to Helicopter Tjungurrayi and the staff at the Warlayiriti Art Center in Balgo:Sally Clifford, Director, Annette Cock, Manager, David Mudgedell, Trainee Director andGareth Nagomarra, Trainee Manager.

In keeping with Aboriginal beliefs and at the request of Helicopter and his family,photographs of the deceased Lucy Yukenbarri are not published in this catalogue.


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Wangkartu Dreaming: Helicopter Tjungurray & Lucy Yukenbarri

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