Barney DANIELS TJUNGURRAYI -Bush Fire Dreaming
Barney DANIELS TJUNGURRAYI -Bush Fire Dreaming

Barney DANIELS TJUNGURRAYI -Bush Fire Dreaming

1996, 173 x 118cm ADG:715

ADG: 715

Description

Story of painting - Bush Fire Dreaming

This painting tells of the recurring themes of the cycle of life, death and regeneration, using the iconography of the snake and the blue tongue lizard. The bush fire is shown as a stippled background of bush scrub, burnt to coax the lizard out from hiding.

Biography - Barney DANIELS TJUNGURRAYI

Born c.1950 - died 1998

Region Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff), N.T.

Group Luritja

Languages Luritja, Pintupi, Warlpiri, Anmatyerre

Medium Acrylic paint on canvas or linen

Subjects snake, blue tongue lizard, water, bushfires, centipede, bush tucker

Born at Haasts Bluff, Barney Daniels considered himself a Luritja man, his father was Warlpiri and his mother an Anmatyerre. His early life was spent learning traditional ways of survival, law and ceremony. He received some schooling at the Mungara settlement near Alice Springs. Barney worked as a stockman on Halls Creek cattle station.

In the mid-1980s, he became involved with artists painting in Papunya and started to paint on small canvas boards which he sold through the Centre for Aboriginal Artists in Alice Springs.

The technique of stippled brushwork, as a background for the main design, became his trademark for the recurring theme of the cycle of life, death and regeneration.

The snake, blue tongued lizard, bush fire, centipede, witchetty grub and bush tucker dreamings are the totems handed down to Barney from his fathers, Tjapaltjarri. Passed down over the generations from father to son this provides a direct link to his Dreamtime ancestors.

Exhibitions

1985       Dot and Circle, a retrospective survey of the Aboriginal acrylic paintings of Central Australia, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne

1987       Gauguin Museum, Tahiti

1988       Centre for Aboriginal Artists, Alice Springs

1988       Bicentennial Exhibition, touring Australia

1990       Art Dock, Contemporary Art from Australia, Noumea, New Caledonia

1992       Tjukurrpa, Museum fur Volkerkunde, Basel

Commissions

1988       Australian Bicentennial Authority, produced: 'My statement for living today', designs on chairs and television sets.

Collections

Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth

Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide

Longbeach Museum, California

Malcolm Forbes Collection, New York

The Holmes a Court Collection, Perth

Gauguin Museum, Tahiti

Artbank, Sydney

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