Lot 215: UTA UTA TJANGALA , CIRCA 1926-1990 SNAKE DREAMING FOR CHILDREN Synthetic polymer powder paint on composition board

Synthetic polymer powder paint on composition board

41 by 61 cm

Bardon, G., Papunya Tula: Art of the Western Desert, McPhee Gribble, Melbourne, 1991, p.98 illus. Bardon, G. and J. Bardon, Papunya, A Place Made After the Story, The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2004, p.253, painting 176

Painted at Papunya in 1972
Geoffrey Bardon
Private collection

Uta Uta was one of the integral members of the first group of artists to take up synthetic paints and boards introduced by Geoffrey Bardon, the Papunya school teacher, in 1971. At the time, Uta Uta was a gardener at the school. He encouraged other artists to take up these new media and became one of the leading figures of the Papunya movement.

The Snake Ancestors are important to several desert groups including the Pintupi. In the ancestral past they created features of the landscape as they travelled across several tribal lands from Uluru through Papunya and to Hooker Creek in Warlpiri country where there is a major ceremonial site.

Bardon (1991:98) illustrates this work with an annotated diagram to describe the painting. The main feature of the painting is the cross-shaped ceremonial ground painting within which the two boys (the white U-shapes) sit. The oblique form of the cross seems to indicate the rockhole at Yumari, Uta Uta's birthplace. The ritual ground painting is analogous to the ancestral Snake which is depicted in the top right as is suggested by the similarity of the forms. The dark U-shape in the top left is a cave while at the bottom left the set of concentric circles is a fire which is adjacent to a body of running water.

This painting is sold with a copy of Geoffrey Bardon's annotated diagram