Harry Tjutjuna is an

Aboriginal art Indigenous Australian art includes art made by Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including collaborations with others. It includes works in a wide range of media including painting on leaves, bark painting, wood carving ...

ist from

central Australia Central Australia, also sometimes referred to as the Red Centre, is an inexactly defined region associated with the geographic centre of Australia. In its narrowest sense it describes a region that is limited to the town of Alice Springs and i ...

. He belongs to the

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 ...

people. Tjutjuna began painting in 2005. He held his first solo

exhibition An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibition ...

in 2007, in Darwin. His work is now held in several major public galleries in Australia, including 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

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 ...

, 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 ...

. His painting ' (Bilby Dreaming Story) was a finalist for the Togard Contemporary Art Award in 2009. In 2010 and 2011, another of Tjutjuna's paintings, ', was chosen as a finalist in both the Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards, and the

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 ...

(NATSIAA).

Life

Tjutjuna was born around 1930. He was born in the

bushland In Australia, bushland is a blanket term for land which supports remnant vegetation or land which is disturbed but still retains a predominance of the original floristics and structure. Human survival in bushland has a whole mythology evolving ...

close to what is now the community of

Pipalyatjara Pipalyatjara (formerly Mount Davies) is an Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal community in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara, Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia, comprising one of the six main communities on " ...

in the north-west corner of

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

. Sources disagree on where exactly he was born. Some say he was born at Walytjatjara, a place to the north-east of Pipalyatjara, just over the border in the

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 ...

. Others say that he was born at Mount Davies, a hill that overlooks Pipalyatjara. When Tjutjuna was still young, his family settled at

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, ...

. He went to school on 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 ...

there and later worked as a

labourer A laborer (or labourer) is a person who works in manual labor types in the construction industry workforce. Laborers are in a working class of wage-earners in which their only possession of significant material value is their labor. Industries e ...

for the community. He later moved back west to live in the communities of

Irrunytju Wingellina or Irrunytju Community is a small Indigenous Australian community in Western Australia located about north east of Perth near the Western Australian-South Australian border in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia. ...

and Pipalyatjara after they were established. He moved there with his wives and children to be closer to his

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 ...

. In his later life, Tjutjuna became known as an important traditional healer (') and law man (') for the Pitjantjatjara. Tjutjuna began painting in late 2005, when he was aged in his mid-seventies. He was living again at Ernabella, and began to paint for the community's art company Ernabella Arts. His work at Ernabella depicted ''Tjukurpa'' (traditional law or stories from the

Dreamtime 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 mythology, Australian Aboriginal beliefs. It was originally used by Francis Ja ...

). It supported a shift in subject matter for the centre's artists, from quite

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...

to more spiritual subjects. In 2008, Tjutjuna moved back to Pipalyatjara and began work for Ninuku Arts.

Artwork

Tjutjuna paints concepts and stories from his Dreaming. His main personal

totem A totem (from oj, ᑑᑌᒼ, italics=no or ''doodem'') is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system. While ''the wo ...

is a

spider Spiders ( order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species ...

('), and his Dreaming revolves around the (Spider Man Dreaming). According to his Dreaming, which was passed on to him from previous generations, Tjutjuna's

ancestor An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder or a forebear, is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). ''Ancestor'' is "any person from whom ...

is a powerful being known as the Spider Man. This creature is said to have created Tjutjuna's country in the

, and so Tjutjuna associates his country, his heritage and himself with this set of beliefs. In this way, the paintings are

autobiographical An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

in addition to depicting traditional stories. Tjutjuna identifies himself as the Spider Man, and his paintings are often seen to symbolise his work as a ' (healer). Because his totem is a spider, he uses

spider web A spider web, spiderweb, spider's web, or cobweb (from the archaic word '' coppe'', meaning "spider") is a structure created by a spider out of proteinaceous spider silk extruded from its spinnerets, generally meant to catch its prey. Spid ...

s to treat wounds on people's skin. Tjutjuna also paints figures from several other Dreaming stories associated with his country, such as the ''Wati Maḻu'' (Red Kangaroo Man) and the ''Kungka Mingkiri'' (Mice Women). Many of the paintings have sexual themes. One of Tjutjuna's most famous paintings, ', is a

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

of two Dreaming stories. It depicts the story of the Kungkarungkara (Seven Sisters), which is about the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the e ...

s of

Pleiades The Pleiades (), also known as The Seven Sisters, Messier 45 and other names by different cultures, is an asterism and an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. At a distance of ...

(the Sisters) and Orion. Tjutjuna painted it from the male's perspective. , a shape-shifting man, chases the seven sisters and catches the youngest,

raping Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or a ...

her. The other story depicted is from the Spider Man Dreaming. The painting was chosen as a finalist for the Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards in 2010, and the

in 2011. Tjutjuna paints in the typical style of the Western Desert, which can be seen as very abstract. The figures in his paintings, ancestral beings, are obscured and encoded for cultural reasons. He uses fields of dots to represent their interactions, and lines to represent their journeys across the landscape. The landscape is depicted with the earthly colours of the desert (reds, oranges,

ochre Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced ...

s and white). In his works depicting , he often paints circular patterns across the background. This motif is used to represent both a spider's web and the spider man's many women. Tjutjuna is also known for

drip painting Drip painting is a form of abstract art in which paint is dripped or poured on to the canvas. This style of action painting was experimented with in the first half of the twentieth century by such artists as Francis Picabia, André Masson and Max ...

References

External links

Harry Tjutjuna
at Ninuku Arts {{DEFAULTSORT:Tjutjuna, Harry 1930 births Living people Australian painters Pitjantjatjara people Artists from South Australia Australian Aboriginal artists