ABORIGINAL DESERT ART  GALLERY

MICHAEL NELSON TJAKAMARRA

Born at Pikilyi (Vaughan Springs), west of Yuendumu, c 1949, Michael grew up in the bush 'without clothes', first seeing white men at Mt Doreen Station.

He remembers hiding in the bush in fear. Michael lived at Haasts Bluff for a time with the same family group as Long Jack Phillipus. Later his parents took him to Yuendumu for European education at the mission school. He left at thirteen, after his initiation, and worked buffalo shooting in 1962 on the East and South Alligator Rivers, driving trucks, droving cattle and in the army, before coming back to Yuendumu and then to Papunya to settle and marry his current wife, Marjorie.

He came to Papunya in 1976, working for a time in the government store and for the Council, observing the work of the older artists for years before beginning to paint regularly for himself in 1983. His parents were both Warlpiri and his father was an important 'Medicine Man' in the Yuendumu community.

Michael paints Possum, Snake, Two Kangaroos, flying Ant and Yam dreamings for the area around Pikilyi.

In 1984 he won the National Aboriginal Art Award; in 1986 he exhibited in the Biennale of Sydney and was included in 'The State of the Art', a British art documentary. In 1987, a painting by Michael (8.2 m) was installed in the foyer of the Sydney Opera House. In 1988 he was introduced to the Queen of England at the opening of the new national Parliament as the designer of the 196 sq metre mosaic in the forecourt of the building. His 1985 painting 'Five Stories' was one of the most reproduced works of Australian art of the 1980s. It appears on the cover of the catalogue of the Asia Society's 'Dreamings' exhibition which toured the USA in 1988-89.

Michael travelled to New York with Aboriginal artist Billy Stockman for the opening of the show. In 1989 he had his first solo exhibition in Melbourne at the Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi and participated in the BMW Art Car Project by hand-painting an M3 race car. In 1993 he received the Australia Medal for services to Aboriginal Art and an Artist's Fellowship, Visual Art Board, Australia Council. Australian Embassy, Washington DC, 1999.

United Nations building, New York City, 1999 1996 sees Michael awaiting his first picture book to be released; a full documentation of his achievements as one of Australia's leading artists in the contemporary Aboriginal Art movement.

Collections:

Parliament House,
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra;
Holmes à Court;
Michael Hollow
Australian Museum, Sydney;
Queensland Art Gallery;
Art Gallery of WA;
Museums & Art Galleries of NT;
SA Museum;
Art Gallery of SA;
Broken Hill Art Gallery,
etc.

This painting depicts three dreamings. The journey of the rock wallaby ancestors from Kunti (Tjuunti) near Mt Singleton and travelled north-west to Yumulpa and stopped at the Bush Potato site Pikilyi shown at the top of the painting.

This is where Michael Nelson was born and the Dreaming has been inherited from his Grandfather. The sinuous lines each site of the painting represent lighting and the short bars are body paint designs indicating the Rock Wallaby man and the Lizard man are full body painted for a ceremony.

MAN'S DREAMING

Late in the afternoon the men prepare the camp and clear the ground for the ceremony. In preparation for the ceremony the spinifex grass is burnt which produces pure white ash. The ashes are then mixed with kangaroo or emu fat and the colour is used for body painting. The ceremony starts after dark and continues till the early hours in the morning. During the ceremony the Rock Wallaby and the Perentie men dance and sit around the symbolic ceremonial circle (ceremonial site), chanting song titles which tell the journeys of the ancestors. They then become one of the totems. The background colouring and linework denotes Sandhills and the landscape of the Central Australian Desert. Due to the sacred aspect of this Dreaming no further information was given.