DOB: c. 1943

BORN: Tjiturrunya, Kintore
LANGUAGE GROUP: Pintupi
COUNTRY: Kintore, Northern Territory

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Ronnie Tjampitjinpa was born in Pintupi land at Muyinnga, about 100 kilometres west of the Kintore Range, just across the Western Australian border. He is the son of Uta Uta Tjangala’s older brother, Minpuru Tjangala (c. 1899–1976). After his initiation into Pintupi law at the site of Yumari, Ronnie and his younger brother Smithy Zimran Tjampitjinpa walked into the Aboriginal community of Yuendumu. They later joined their parents and other siblings – who had come in to Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff) in 1956 from the Dover Hills/Yumari area. At the new settlement of Papunya. Ronnie worked as a labourer, assisting with the fencing of the aerodromes at Papunya and Ikuntji. He was one of the youngest of the group of men who began painting at the start of the Western Desert art movement in 1971, and was a founder of Paunya Tula Artists.

 

Ronnie was one of the first of the Pintupi men to embrace art as a method of recording culture, which became the genesis of the Desert Art Movement, celebrating his first art exhibition in 1974. His style is generally simple geometric shapes and bold lines in themes of Water Dreaming, Bushfire Dreaming and the ancient, sacred Tingari Cycle, the epic story of legendary beings of the Pintupi that travelled the desert performing rituals, teaching law, creating landforms and creating ceremonial sites. While Tingari is spoken of regularly, it is a sacred and secret ceremony and cannot be revealed to the uninitiated.

 

Ronnie won the 1988 Alice Springs art prize and was a finalist in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIA) seven times.

 

During the 1970s, Ronnie was preoccupied with returning to his traditional lands and became a strong advocate for the Outstation movement, travelling between meetings in Papunya, Yuendumu, Wirrimanu (Balgo) and Mount Doreen Station. His goal was finally achieved with the establishment of the Walungurru (Kintore) settlement in 1981. Ronnie moved there with his young family in 1983, establishing an Outstation at Ininti (Redbank) and serving as chairman of the Kintore Outstation Council. During this period, he emerged as one of Papunya Tula Artists’ major painters, pioneering the bold, scaled-up, linear style that came to dominate many of the Walungurru painters’ work during the 1990s. Throughout the 1980s, Ronnie worked devotedly on a land claim for Ininti, holding meetings in Darwin, Warmun (Turkey Creek), Utopia and many other places. Abandoning his political activity to continue painting, he remains one of the last founding members of Papunya Tula Artists, and his career spans more than 40 years.

 

Sources: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and Dr Gavin Bedford