KAAPA MBITJANA TJAMPITJINPA, Unguuli (Bush Plum), 1977

KAAPA MBITJANA TJAMPITJINPA Anmatyerre language, c.1920 - 1989 Unguuli (Bush Plum), 1977 acrylic on canvas board 40.5 x 30.5 cm; 42 x 32 cm (framed) PROVENANCE Papunya Tula Artists, Northern Territory, Cat No. K771126 Private Collection, Queensland Private Collection, Victoria Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Papunya Tula Artists Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa was the principal painter of the Papunya School murals and the first chairman of the Papunya Tula Artists Cooperative, established in 1972. His authority within the community was matched by an independent practice: before the cooperative existed, he was already selling his work at Papunya on his own account. His earliest works were carved from wood, and he later turned to watercolours in the Hermannsburg manner. Resident at Papunya from 1957, he was present when Albert Namatjira lived there for several months in 1959, and the meeting of the two painters, given their cultural connections, was all but inevitable. The watercolour tradition thus entered his practice through direct contact, and the board painting of the 1970s emerges from a career already shaped by several ways of picturing country. The painting depicts the Unguuli, or bush plum, at Unya Yuta, a site on Mount Allan Station approximately 180 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs. At its heart, a set of concentric circles marks the mythological home of the bush plum, and at another level of interpretation the same form names the geographic place known as Unya Yuta. Image and country are held together in a single motif. Dots across the ground represent the plums themselves, while lines radiating from the outer circle evoke growth and the maintenance of good supplies of Unguuli in the area, secured through the ceremonial celebration of this mythology. The fruit is a small, sweet, purple berry that favours the creekbeds of Central Australia, so that the painting records a food source as well as a place of ancestral origin. © KAAPA TJAMPITJINPA / Copyright agency, 2026

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