Ronnie Tjampitjinpa | FireWorks Gallery

Artist Tabs

Selected works

FW6616 Tingari/ Bushfire	FW15410 Men's Business 1	FW15517 Morning After 2
FW18282 Rain story	FW19266 Rain story & water soakage	FW19733 Tingari
FW19734 Fire breaks	FW19735 Rain story	FW19808 Tingari
FW19809 Fire breaks	FW6035 Bushfire	FW8045 Tingari
FW8046 Bushfire Dreaming/Tingari

Bio & CV

Born: c.1943 Muyinnga NT
Language: Pintupi
Country: Lake Mackay
Region: Walungurru (Kintore) & Alice Springs NT

Ronnie began painting around 1974, in the early years of the Papunya Tula Artists movement, with his work focusing (largely) on the Tingari Cycle stories relating to this area. The images can be simply understood as a coded visual language derived from initiation ceremonies. During the 1990s, and through to the present, Ronnie’s work has continued to develop its own vibrant character as he experiments with fresh combinations of motifs, colour and compositional design. His works are held in numerous private, corporate and public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery and Musee des Arts Africains et Oceanies, Paris, France.

View 2021 Special Edition exhibition list and video here

Story/Statement

FIRE DREAMING
Fire Dreaming refers to the fire that was used to clean up the evidence of Men's Business or Business Camp. The Bushfire Story is a variation of this, often focusing on pure linear compositions which, whilst startlingly bold and simple, denote the fire moving swiftly through desert scrubland of mulga and spinifex bushes. The paintings are always referring to particular sites such as Lake Mackay or Lake McDonald where the mapping within these later works is conceptual, not actual.

TINGARI
Tingari ancestors are believed to have travelled through the Western Desert creating sacred sites and handing down responsibility of the continuity of all laws and ceremonies. Tingari gathered and performed at sacred sites, and this songline ritual of both ceremony, and more recently dot/circle/line painting, remain part of this continuing tradition. The (Men’s) Tingari designs are iconoclastically embedded into the essential traditions of the Western Desert art movement of the Pintupi.

WATER DREAMING
Rain clouds appear, with water hitting mountains and running down the sides to form soakages at the base. With these works the artist extends the traditional manner of how the concentric roundels are painted.

Courtesy of FireWorks Gallery

“Tjampitjinpa’s brushstroke, although certainly not dotted, still exhibits a slight but distinct wavering that breaks up the artist’s gesture. It is kind of shorthand for a series of dots strung together, a way of adhering to tradition while trying to accommodate the present… Tjampitjinpa’s brushstrokes, we might say, remain markings, always representative of something. What we are looking at remains mediated by a history and a culture.”

Rex Butler essay Sprit & Vision 2004 P 113

RONNIE TJAMPITJINPA

Born: c.1943 Muyinnga NT

Language: Pintupi

Country: Lake Mackay

Region: Walungurru (Kintore) & Alice Springs NT

EXHIBITIONS—SOLO (SELECTED)

2020 Special Edition – New Screen-prints Fireworks Gallery Brisbane

2019 Tribute to a Master, Utopia Art, Sydney

2017 Ronnie Tjampitjinpa NOW, Utopia Art, Sydney

2015 Weather Patterns FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2013 Firebrand V: In Focus Ronnie Tjampitjinpa Fire and Rain FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2006 Commissioned Works FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2003 Bushfire FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2000 Ronnie Tjampitjinpa – Aboriginal Lawman-Masterworks Australian Exhibition Center-Chicago USA

1999 Gallery Gabrielle Pizza Melbourne

1995 Accustom Gallery Melbourne

1994 Utopia Art Sydney

EXHIBITIONS—GROUP (SELECTED)

2020 Linesmen FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2020 Reflections on Emily and Papunya, High Line Nine Galleries, New York

2020 Pintupi Masters - Enduring Dreamings, Kate Owen Gallery, Sydney

2019 Beyond Time, Australian Aboriginal Art, Booker Lowe Gallery, Houston, TX, USA

2019 Large Showroom; Large Works, FireWorks Gallery, Brisbane

2019 Reverence, D'Lan Davidson, Sydney

2019 Lunar Legacy, Art Mob, Hobart

2019 Desert Painters of Australia, Larry Gagosian Gallery, New York, USA - from the Steve Martin & Anne Springfield Collections and Kluge-Ruhe Collection of the University of Virginia, USA

2019 Pintupi Artists of the Western Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, WA

2018 Welcome to Thompson Street FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2015 – 2017 Country & Western: landscape re-imagined, a Perc Tucker Regional Gallery travelling exhibition, Tour venues include: S.H. Ervin, Sydney; Blue Mountains City Art Gallery; Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery; Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery; Orange Regional Gallery; Cairns Regional Gallery, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory

2017 A SWEEP: Old & New Works FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2015 Weather Patterns FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2014 Melbourne Art Fair Royal Exhibition Building Melbourne

2014 INTERMISSION FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2014 Cross Over Merricks House Art Gallery Victoria

2014 The Long Hot Summer: Group Exhibition FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2013 Fire & Rain FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2011 Eclectica Exhibition Series (I & II) FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2008 Anzac Arsists 2008 FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2007 Lines and Signs FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2006 Three Large Rooms FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2004 Collectors Series FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

1999 Encompass Australian Exhibition Centre – Chicago USA

1999 In-sites a survey of Australian Aboriginal Art Australian Exhibition Centre – Chicago USA

1999 Despard Gallery Hobart

1999 The California Palace of the Legion of Honour San Francisco USA

1998 Australian Aboriginal Art Australian Exhibition Centre – Chicago USA

1996 Celebrating Twenty Five Years Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi Melbourne

1995 Pitture e Sculture dell’Australia Aborigena Museo di Architettura e Scultura Ligure di Sant’Agostino Genova Italy

1994 Museum Villa Stuck Prinzregentenstrabe Munich

1994 Durack Gallery Broome Western Australia

1994 Dreamtime Gallery Broadbeach QLD

1994 Gallerie Australis Adelaide South Australia

ART AWARDS

1998 Alice Award

COLLECTIONS

National Gallery of Australia Canberra

Art Gallery of New South Wales Sydney

Bendigo Art Gallery Victoria

National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne

Robert Holmes a Court Collection Perth

Medibank Private Collection Australia

Supreme Court of the Northern Territory Darwin

Queensland Art Gallery Brisbane

Groningen Museum The Netherlands

Art Gallery of Western Australia Perth

Art Gallery of South Australia Adelaide

Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory Darwin

Supreme Court Darwin

Araluen Arts Centre Alice Springs

Riddoch Art Gallery

University of Virginia USA

Musee des Arts Africains et Oceanies Paris France

Kelton Foundation Santa Monica California USA

The Ganter Myer Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Art Australia

The Kulge-Ruge collection of Australian Aboriginal Art USA

The Nibberluna Collection Hobart Tasmania Australia

Artbank Sydney

Campbelltown City Art Gallery NSW

Donald Khan Collection Lowe Art Museum University of Miami USA

Past exhibitions

SOLO

Special Edition Screen-prints 2020

Linesmen 2020

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