Papunya is a small Aboriginal settlement with about 300 inhabitants 240 kilometers northwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory in Australia . Papunya is known for its globally recognized Aboriginal artist colony. This is the place where the Aborigines of the Pintupi and Luritja tribes live . Papunya and the land belong to these Aborigines, and a permit is required to pass through.
The Pintupi and Luritja people were deported to Hermannsburg and Haasts Bluff in the 1930s , as there were confrontations with their nomadic lifestyle and the cattle breeders who invaded the country and claimed the water holes for themselves and the cattle.
In the 1950s, the Australian government drilled watering holes and built community houses for the Aborigines and the community grew to more than 1,000 people by the early 1970s. The standard of living was low, there were health problems and disputes between the differently speaking and historically experienced groups. The Pintupi migrated to their traditional land further west in the early 1980s. Without government help they founded the settlement of Kintore 250 kilometers from Papunya . 86.3 percent of the residents of Papunya are of the Lutheran faith . This is one of the highest rates of any Australian city.
Artist colony
An artist colony has developed in the Papunya settlement since the 1970s, combining historical Aboriginal art with modern art and is one of the most important Aboriginal artists' movements. Papunya was founded on the site of the honey ants , an ancestral creature of the Pintupi.
In 1971, art teacher Geoffrey Bardon managed to have the walls of the school building painted with traditional motifs. Old Tom Onion Tjapangati, the owner of Honey Ant Dreaming , gave permission to do the honey pot ant mural . However, this mural was removed due to a school cleanliness ordinance in 1972 after Bardon left school. Other Aborigines were now encouraged and painted. Bardon obtained new materials like synthetic paint and boards. The Papunya Tula Artist Cooperative was founded . The new possibilities offered more extensive color compositions and design forms, but painting remained limited in its possibilities to traditional representations until around 1980. After another three years, the size of the pictures on boards increased and then works were painted on canvas. The artists used naturalistic representations such as shield, spear, ax and symbols that were sacred to them. The painter Johnny Warangkula Jupurrula was one of the first to resolve lines that have been used so far . He perfected dot painting and created iconographic elements that dissolve in the picture. This was the breakthrough and the artists of Papunya with their dot painting (point painting) as a painting style gained national and international recognition.
literature
Geoffrey Bardon: Papunya Tula: Art of the Western Desert. (1992) Tuttle Publishers. ISBN 0-86914-160-0
Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius. (2001) Eds. Hetti Perkins and Hannah Fink. Art Gallery of NSW in association with Papunya Tula Artists. ISBN 0-7347-6310-7 .
