The Collection of the Late Ian Dunlop, Canberra
Lot 205
Uta Uta Tjangala(circa 1920-1990)Tingarri, Marpurinya Waterhole, 1974
3 December 2025, 14:00 AEDT
SydneyAU$8,000 - AU$12,000
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Alex Clark
Head of Sale, Senior Specialist
Merryn Schriever
Managing Director, Australia
Uta Uta Tjangala (circa 1920-1990)
Tingarri, Marpurinya Waterhole, 1974
synthetic polymer powder paint on composition board
76.5 x 61.0cm (30 1/8 x 24in).
synthetic polymer powder paint on composition board
76.5 x 61.0cm (30 1/8 x 24in).
Footnotes
PROVENANCE
Painted at Yayayi
Purchased from the artist on 6 July 1974
The Collection of the Late Ian Dunlop, Canberra
In 1974 Ian Dunlop visited Yayayi, a remote community in Central Australia where Pintupi people had recently moved to escape the difficulties of living at the larger permanent government settlement of Papunya. Dunlop had come to Yayayi to follow up on the lives of people he had photographed ten years earlier as they were leaving their Western Desert homeland.
The 1974 footage remained in storage until 2006 when Fred Myers, now Silver Professor of Anthropology at New York University, who appears in the Yayayi footage as a young PhD student, took the footage to show it to Pintupi people now living on their own land at Kintore and Kiwirrkura. The screening resulted in a collaborative film project between Dunlop, Pip Deveson and Fred Myers, Remembering Yayayi, released in 2014.
In 1974 Dunlop filmed numerous artists, including Uta Uta, and whilst the footage does not include this work, there are slides showing the artist with this painting amongst others, now lodged with archives of Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the National Archives of Australia, Canberra.
At the time, Professor Myers made notes from the artist which he has shared. They read: This painting is about the Dreamtime story at a major waterhole (soakage) called marpurinya ('root place'), south of Lake Mackay. The water here is said to be permanent and used primarily in the summer months when smaller waters would be dried out - and it was used primarily by Uta Uta Tjangala's close countrymen.
The Dreaming at the place is part of the extensive Tingari cycle that crosses Pintupi country in three routes; and the cycle is the foundation of the of the post-initiation instruction of young men, during which they are secluded from women and children for several months at a time.
The story presented here is a mythological one enacted with decorations during the instruction period of novices or other appropriate times, and is associated with the Rain Dreaming, some of whom travelled with the tingari men along the northern route.
At Marpurninya, it is said a rain Dreaming man names Tjaramata (a secret name), was lying down - and went underground were some sacred objects identified with lightning. Two men from the north (a country associated with the Rain / Water Dreaming) came to Marpurinya and pulled this lightning out of the ground, tied it in hairstring, stuck it in their hairbuns (illeg.) and fled with it. It is said that they 'stole it' and escaped.
The place was the Dreaming place of Pinta Pinta Tjapanangka's father, now dead, and Pinta Pinta has major control of the 'story', along with Uta Uta (the man's sister's son) who is a 'manager' for the story and place.