''Gulgardi'' is a 1971 painting by Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa, an Indigenous Australian artist from

Papunya Papunya (Pintupi-Luritja: ''Warumpi'') is a small Indigenous Australian community roughly northwest of Alice Springs (Mparntwe) in the Northern Territory, Australia. It is known as an important centre for Contemporary Indigenous Australian art, ...

in Australia's

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

. It is notable for being the first work by an Indigenous Australian artist to win a contemporary art award, and the first public recognition of a Papunya painting.

Background and creation

Kaapa was an Indigenous Australian, born in remote Central Australia around 1920. Kaapa worked on a cattle station at

Haasts Bluff Haasts Bluff, also known as Ikuntji, is an Aboriginal Australian community in Central Australia, a region of the Northern Territory. The community is located in the MacDonnell Shire local government area, west of Alice Springs. At the 2006 cens ...

before moving to Papunya in the 1960s, having been present during the town's construction in the late 1950s. Once settled at Papunya, according to art historian

Vivien Johnson Vivien Joan Johnson (born 1949) is an Australian sociologist, writer on Indigenous Australian art, and former editor-in-chief of the Dictionary of Australian Artists Online. Johnson is notable for the publication of several key reference works ...

, he was a drinker with a reputation as a troublemaker, cattle thief and grog runner. He was also charismatic and smart. For many years prior to the 1970s, Kaapa had been using traditional designs to create works of art for sale. These had included wooden carvings and watercolour paintings. In 1971 a local official, Jack Cooke, took six of Kaapa's paintings from Papunya into Alice Springs, entering one of them in a local competition, the Caltex Art Award. On 27 August that picture, ''Gulgardi'', also referred to as ''Men’s Ceremony for the Kangaroo, Gulgardi'', shared the first prize with a work by Jan Wesley Smith. The picture, approximately 140 by 60 centimetres in size, was painted on an old plywood cupboard door that still had rusty nails in it, as well as holes where the handle once had been.

Reception

''Gulgardi'' was described by the National Gallery of Victoria: "Kaapa's work, with its pictorial elements and seductive delicacy of detail, is cultivated to appeal to the western gaze. It also recreates the dramatic spectacle of men participating in ceremony and creates an illusion of the third dimension." Art historian Vivian Johnson considered the work typical of Kaapa's technique at the time. She wrote: The work is held by the

Araluen Arts Centre The Araluen Cultural Precinct, formerly the Araluen Centre for Arts & Entertainment, in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia, is a cultural precinct which includes the Araluen Arts Centre, the Museum of Central Australia (incorpo ...

in Alice Springs.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* * {{Central and Western Desert artists 1971 paintings Australian paintings Paintings in Australia