The Life of Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri (c1923-1998)

Abstract

Biographies of Australian Indigenous artists are a recent phenomenon. This thesis responds to a growing national and international interest in Indigenous lives and art by focusing on Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, a Pintupi man whose life span coincided with the colonisation of the Western Desert region of Central Australia in the twentieth century. This thesis represents the first biography of Namarari and the first of a Pintupi individual. Importantly, it explores the long-term relationship between one of Papunya's founding artists and the Papunya Tula Artists organisation. The question of how an Indigenous artist's biography may be written for a contemporary audience has received scant scholarly attention, with no apparent model of best practice for the genre. This cross-cultural study draws on the fields of anthropology, social history and art history and the practices of life writing, oral history and formal analysis. A key concern is that of the visibility of the subject, given that he and the author never met. The biography was assembled from fragmentary data originating in existing oral history records and supplemented by interviews with relatives of Namarari and with art advisors who worked with him over three decades. The broad aim of the thesis is to respond to the questions: what can a study of Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri's life and art career tell us about him as a individual, and then, how does that illuminate our understanding of the Pintupi people and the development of Papunya Tula art? Namarari's life story is presented chronologically and takes into account his culture, family life and art practice. He survived the transition from a traditional lifestyle into and through the fraught cross-cultural milieu of European colonisation. Namarari's adaptive responses to changing government policies were counter-balanced by a quiet determination to honour his culture's primary values. The recognition he achieved as an artist overshadows his less visible role as an unassuming cross-cultural educator. Namarari's legacy is demonstrably significant and worthy of posthumous recognition. Show more