What is Papunya Tula - The Origins of Western Desert Aboriginal Art

Papunya Tula is the name of both an art movement and an art company - and together they represent one of the most significant events in the history of Australian art. Understanding Papunya Tula is essential to understanding where Central Desert Aboriginal painting comes from and why it matters.

Papunya - a place not of their choosing

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Australian Government established Papunya as an assimilation settlement approximately 240km northwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Aboriginal people from multiple language groups - predominantly Pintupi, Luritja, Warlpiri, Arrernte and Anmatyerre - were moved there from their traditional country. Papunya was not the traditional country of most of the people forced to live there. They had no custodial connection to the land. For many, the move represented a devastating rupture from country, ceremony and identity.

During the early 1960s the settlement was ravaged by disease. Between 1963 and 1964, close to half the population died. The people who remained were living far from their country, separated from the land that was the foundation of their spiritual and cultural life.

The Honey Ant Mural - 1971

In 1971, Geoffrey Bardon arrived at Papunya as a school teacher. He noticed the men drawing symbols and patterns in the sand as they told stories, and encouraged his students to paint a mural on the school wall using their own cultural traditions. The children were initially reluctant. A group of elders came forward with a design representing the Honey Ant Tjukurrpa - an important Dreaming story for the area, as Papunya is the traditional epicentre of the Honey Ant Dreaming, where songlines converge.

Senior men including Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, Old Bert Tjakamarra, Bill Stockman Tjapaltjarri and Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra painted the mural on the school wall. When it was finished, the men asked if they could continue painting. Bardon provided paints and boards - whatever materials he could find - and the men began painting their Dreaming stories on masonite boards, car bonnets, tin cans and matchboxes.

In August 1971, Kaapa Tjampitjinpa's painting Men's Ceremony for the Kangaroo, Gulgardi jointly won the Caltex Golden Jubilee Art Award in Alice Springs, judged equal in quality to a work by a European artist. It was the first time an Aboriginal Australian had won a contemporary art award. Bardon took a selection of paintings to Alice Springs and raised $1,300 for the artists. Within six months they had sold more than 600 paintings.

The founding of Papunya Tula Artists - 1972

On 16 November 1972, the artists incorporated their own company at a gathering near Alice Springs. They named it Papunya Tula after a small hill near Papunya - a Honey Ant Dreaming site shared by groups across the Western Desert - meaning "a meeting place for all brothers and cousins." It was the first entirely Aboriginal-owned and directed art company in Australia, and is recognised by the National Museum of Australia as the founding event of the Western Desert Art Movement.

The administration of Papunya was opposed to the cooperative because it was an entirely Aboriginal-run organisation that existed in direct opposition to the government's assimilation policy. The Honey Ant mural was eventually painted over by a maintenance worker. But the company survived.

Sacred knowledge and the challenge of going public

As the paintings began to circulate publicly, the artists faced a profound cultural challenge. Many of the symbols they painted encoded sacred knowledge - Tjukurpa - that was restricted to initiated men and not meant to be seen by women, uninitiated people, or non-Aboriginal audiences.

From 1973 onwards, the artists worked collectively to remove or modify detailed depictions of sacred objects and ceremonial paraphernalia from their paintings. Dotting and over-dotting became the means of concealing these sacred elements - overlaying dots across restricted symbols so that the story could be shared on the surface while its deepest meanings remained protected. This is the origin of the technique that came to define Western Desert painting.

The homelands movement and expansion

Following the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976, many Pintupi artists were able to return to their traditional country. In the early 1980s they established the communities of Kintore (Walungurru), 530km west of Alice Springs, and Kiwirrkurra further west still in Western Australia. Papunya Tula Artists followed its artists into the desert, establishing studios in both communities across a span of 700km, as well as maintaining a gallery in Alice Springs.

Today Papunya Tula Artists operates with approximately 50 shareholders and represents around 80 artists, predominantly Pintupi and Luritja. Sales revenue funds community services including the Purple House mobile dialysis program and the Kintore swimming pool. In 2007, a painting by Papunya Tula artist Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri sold at auction for £1.03 million - then a record price for Aboriginal art.

The artists who built the movement

The founding generation of Papunya Tula painters included some of the most significant Aboriginal artists of the twentieth century. Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri became internationally recognised for his complex multi-layered compositions mapping the stories of his country. Kaapa Tjampitjinpa served as the company's inaugural chairman. Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra, Old Mick Tjakamarra and Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri were among those who painted the original Honey Ant Mural. Their work is now held in every major public institution in Australia and in collections around the world.

The legacy of Papunya Tula

The creation of Papunya Tula Artists is widely regarded as the origin of the Western Desert art movement, which inspired Aboriginal communities across the Central Desert, the APY Lands and beyond to document their cultural heritage on permanent artworks. What began as an informal gathering of men painting in the shade has become a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most powerful examples of Aboriginal self-determination and cultural survival in Australian history.

The movement's influence extends directly to the artists represented by Art by Farquhar. Artists from Willowra, Yuendumu, Utopia and the APY Lands all paint in traditions that trace their roots to the events at Papunya in 1971 and 1972.

Central Desert paintings at Art by Farquhar

Art by Farquhar is a specialist gallery for original Aboriginal paintings from the Central Desert of the Northern Territory and the APY Lands of South Australia. We work directly with artists and their families from communities including Willowra, Yuendumu, Utopia, Ernabella and Watarru. Browse the full collection at farquhar.art/collections/australian-aboriginal-paintings or contact us at sales@farquhar.art.