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Johnny Warrangkula Tjupurrula / Luritja people / Australia 1920–2001 / Medicine Corroboree Dreaming 1971 / Synthetic polymer paint on composition board / 37 x 66cm / Purchased 1994 with funds from Margaret Hockey in memory of Patrick Hockey through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © Estate of the artist/Licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd
Johnny Warrangkula TjupurrulaMedicine Corroboree Dreaming 1971
On Display: QAG, Gallery 13
Johnny Warrangkula Tjupurrula was born in Mintjilpirri in the south-western corner of the Northern Territory. He grew up in the desert without exposure to Western schooling and moved to the Hermannsburg mission with his family as a young man where he worked as a labourer on the airstrip. He was a village councillor at Papunya, and one of the first group of elders who became the ‘painting men’ at Papunya in 1971.
Warrangkula Tjupurrula had a slight tremor and some difficulty using brushes, so he came to favour a dotting and over-dotting technique with which he achieved great expressiveness. Geoffrey Bardon, the influential art teacher at the Papunya School, described him as ‘one of the great Papunya masters’.1
Note: The artist’s language group is sometimes described as ‘Warlpiri/Luritja’. There is no Luritja language as such; it is an Arrernte word meaning ‘from somewhere else’. It is used by Western Desert Aborigines to describe a Creole, or hybrid version of a traditional language.
Endnotes:
1 Geoffrey Bardon, Papunya Tula: Art of the Western Desert, Penguin, Melbourne, 1991, p.39.