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Dickie Minyintiri ( 1915 – 23 September 2014) was an
Australian Aboriginal Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Islands ...
artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...
from
Pukatja Pukatja (formerly Ernabella) is an Aboriginal community in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia, comprising one of the six main communities on "The Lands" (the others being Amata, Pipalyatjara, Fregon/Kaltjiti, ...
, South Australia. He began painting in 2005, when he was about 90 years old. He is now one of central Australia's most successful artists, after winning the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2011. He was said to be the oldest artist at Pukatja, and also the community's most senior lawman (a keeper of ''
Tjukurpa The Dreaming, also referred to as Dreamtime, is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal beliefs. It was originally used by Francis Gillen, quickly adopted by his co ...
'' or sacred knowledge).


Life

Minyintiri was born into a
Pitjantjatjara The Pitjantjatjara (; or ) are an Aboriginal people of the Central Australian desert near Uluru. They are closely related to the Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra and their languages are, to a large extent, mutually intelligible (all are vari ...
family some time around 1915. He was born in
the bush "The bush" is a term mostly used in the English vernacular of Australia and New Zealand where it is largely synonymous with '' backwoods'' or ''hinterland'', referring to a natural undeveloped area. The fauna and flora contained within this a ...
at Pilpirinyi,
Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...
, near the border with South Australia. His childhood was spent living nomadically in the desert with his family. Their
homeland A homeland is a place where a cultural, national, or racial identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethni ...
s were spread over a large area along the border, but they often travelled far to the east for ceremonies. They camped for several years around the
Musgrave Ranges Musgrave Ranges is a mountain range in Central Australia, straddling the boundary of South Australia (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) and the Northern Territory (MacDonnell Shire), extending into Western Australia. It is between the Great V ...
near what would later become the settlement of
Ernabella Pukatja (formerly Ernabella) is an Aboriginal community in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia, comprising one of the six main communities on "The Lands" (the others being Amata, Pipalyatjara, Fregon/Kaltjiti, ...
. This was prior to the arrival of
White people White is a racialized classification of people and a skin color specifier, generally used for people of European origin, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, and point of view. Description of populations as ...
in the area; the family had their first contact with Western civilisation in the 1920s, when Minyintiri was still a child. They encountered a group of men on camels attempting to pull their truck out of a
bog A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagmire, and muskeg; a ...
. Minyintiri and his family were present for the establishment of the
mission Mission (from Latin ''missio'' "the act of sending out") may refer to: Organised activities Religion *Christian mission, an organized effort to spread Christianity *Mission (LDS Church), an administrative area of The Church of Jesus Christ of ...
settlement of Ernabella in 1937. They settled on the mission with several other Aboriginal families, and Minyintiri has lived at Ernabella ever since. He worked for most of his life as a shepherd and shearer, but became a widely respected ' (traditional healer) in his later years. He is now one of the most senior elders in his community. Before he became a painter, Minyintiri crafted traditional wooden tools (mostly spears). Minyintiri began painting at Ernabella Arts in late 2005. He painted at the art centre for a few hours each day, while his wife (now deceased) would wait outside the centre with their dogs. Minyintiri originally painted on paper, but now paints on canvas. His works have been shown in many group exhibitions since 2006, in most major Australian cities. The
South Australian Museum The South Australian Museum is a natural history museum and research institution in Adelaide, South Australia, founded in 1856 and owned by the Government of South Australia. It occupies a complex of buildings on North Terrace in the cultu ...
was one of the first public galleries to show his work, which it did in a 2007 exhibition.


Artwork

Most of Minyintiri's paintings are done using
synthetic polymer Some familiar household synthetic polymers include: Nylons in textiles and fabrics, Teflon in non-stick pans, Bakelite for electrical switches, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in pipes, etc. The common PET bottles are made of a synthetic polymer, polye ...
paint on canvases, although his earliest paintings were done on paper. His paintings are almost always multi-layered with strong motifs and symbols used to represent landmarks or figures. Each layer represents a different memory or part of a
creation story A creation myth (or cosmogonic myth) is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it., "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the universe and its inhabitants came to be. Creation myths develop ...
. Because of his old age, Minyintiri only paints six to eight artworks a year. Nearly all of them are large canvases. His paintings depict sacred stories from his Dreaming. He paints
songlines A songline, also called dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) within the animist belief systems of the Aboriginal cultures of Australia which mark the route followed by localised "creator-beings" in the Dre ...
, or the journeys taken by the ancestral beings of his Dreaming country – such as the ''kanyaḻa'' (
euro The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...
), ''malu'' (
red kangaroo The red kangaroo (''Osphranter rufus'') is the largest of all kangaroos, the largest terrestrial mammal native to Australia, and the largest extant marsupial. It is found across mainland Australia, except for the more fertile areas, such as sou ...
), ''wiilu'' (
stone-curlew The stone-curlews, also known as dikkops or thick-knees, consist of 10 species within the family Burhinidae, and are found throughout the tropical and temperate parts of the world, with two or more species occurring in some areas of Africa, Asia, ...
), ''waru'' (
wallaby A wallaby () is a small or middle-sized Macropodidae, macropod native to Australia and New Guinea, with introduced populations in New Zealand, Hawaii, the United Kingdom and other countries. They belong to the same Taxonomy (biology), taxon ...
) and ''kaḻaya'' (
emu The emu () (''Dromaius novaehollandiae'') is the second-tallest living bird after its ratite relative the ostrich. It is endemic to Australia where it is the largest native bird and the only extant member of the genus ''Dromaius''. The emu' ...
). His art is often also a reflection of his younger life in the desert, before settling permanently at Ernabella. The religious elements of his works are always obscured, for cultural reasons. Examples of Minyintiri's work are held in the
National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum. The NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two ...
, the
Art Gallery of South Australia The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), established as the National Gallery of South Australia in 1881, is located in Adelaide. It is the most significant visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of ...
, the
Art Gallery of New South Wales The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most importa ...
, the
Queensland Gallery of Modern Art The Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) is an art museum located within the Queensland Cultural Centre in the South Bank precinct of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The gallery is part of QAGOMA. GOMA, which opened on 2 December 2006, is the largest ...
, and the
National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...
.


NATSIAA

In 2010, Minyintiri's painting ' ("Red Kangaroo Tracks") was chosen as a finalist for the 27th
National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award The National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) is Australia's longest running Indigenous art award. Established in 1984 as the National Aboriginal Art Award by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darw ...
. The award was won by Jimmy Donegan, another Pitjantjatjara artist, from
Kalka Kalka is a town in the Panchkula district of Haryana, India. It is near Panchkula city. The name of the town is derived from the Hindu goddess Kali. It is situated in the foothills of the Himalayas and is a gateway to the neighbouring state o ...
. Minyintiri won the 28th NATSIAA in August 2011, for his painting ' ("Euro Tracks"). His work was chosen from over 300 entries, which had been reduced to 61 finalists. Minyintiri was about 96 at the time. With Donegan winning the award the year before, it was the second year in a row that an artist from the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands had won. ' is a multi-layered synthetic painting, done on a large canvas. The background is made up of pale yellows and oranges, and is covered with a complex network of thick, ivory-coloured lines. Flashes of blue, black and pink peep through the surface lines. The judges praised Minyintiri for his subtle use of colour. His work was compared to the early
batik Batik is an Indonesian technique of wax-resist dyeing applied to the whole cloth. This technique originated from the island of Java, Indonesia. Batik is made either by drawing dots and lines of the resist with a spouted tool called a ''ca ...
works of
Emily Kngwarreye Emily Kame Kngwarreye (or Emily Kam Ngwarray) (1910 – 3 September 1996) was an Aboriginal Australian artist from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory. She is one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of Aust ...
. The painting depicts a sacred men's ceremonial site near Pilpirinyi. The network of lines traces the tracks of ancestral spirits (kangaroos, dogs and emu) to important waterholes, where men also went for their ceremonies. Each layer and line is a memory of a journey Minyintiri has made. The painting is therefore a reflection of the artist's years of travelling his country, and an expression of his ancestral relationship to the land.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Minyintiri, Dickie 1910s births Australian Aboriginal artists Pitjantjatjara people People from South Australia People from Goldfields-Esperance 2014 deaths Australian painters Australian Aboriginal elders