Tingari Cycle - Ronnie Tjampitjinpa

Ronnie Tjampitjinpa was born on Pintupi land at Muyinnga in the Western Desert. At the age of 13, he moved with his family to the settlement at Papunya. He was in his late twenties at the dawn of the Western Desert painting movement. One of the youngest painters to join Papunya Tula Artists, Tjampitjinpa was mentored in the early years by Old Mick Tjakamarra, a senior custodian of the Honey Ant Dreaming and a foundational figure in the movement's inception.

Ronnie Tjampitjinpa's works began appearing in Papunya Tula exhibitions during the 1970s, and by the 1980s his paintings were regularly exhibited in commercial galleries in Sydney and Melbourne. He was awarded the Alice Springs Art Prize during this period. In the early to mid-1990s, Tjampitjinpa emerged as a leading figure in the evolution of Pintupi men’s painting. His bold, geometric compositions became emblematic of the period and were included in major survey exhibitions both in Australia and internationally. This culminated in a solo retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2015.

Here he has depicted the Tingari cycle, where the rituals comprise hundreds of interconnected song and dance cycles, recounting the travels, ceremonial acts, and creation of sacred sites by the Tingari during the Dreaming.