Dreaming by Ronnie Tjampitjinpa

Dreaming 1971
synthetic polymer paint and natural pigments on chipboard Purchased 1972. MAGNT Collection. WAL101

This painting describes a long journey - it could be many hundreds of miles - in the Western Desert. The circles indicate ceremonial sites and/or waterholes, while the lines between them are tracks. (original description)

One of few works to be created in natural pigments, Dreaming is a powerful expression of Pintupi aesthetics, which defies its diminutive scale. As a man of relative youth in the confines of the Men's Painting Room in Papunya, Ronnie was driven by a desire to express his knowledge and experience of ritual amongst his cultural peers. The graphics implicity of his bold circle-and-path construction sseems to prefigure the dramatic and muscular geometries for which Ronnie would achieve considerable renown from the late 1980s onwards.

Ronnie, who continues to live in Walungurru (Kintore), was a consultant
on Tjungunutja and the 2012 Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority report in to the secret and ceremonial nature of MAGNT's Papunya collection, which enabled this exhibition to proceed.

Ronnie TJAMPITJINPA
b.near Muyin, Northern Territory, c.1943
Pintupi language