Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, circa 1932-2002, UNTITLED (LUNGKATA'S TWO SONS)

synthetic polymer paint on canvas  
bears artist's name and title on Art Gallery of South Australia label on the reverse of the stretcher  
245.5 BY 176.3CM  

Provenance: 
Painted at Umbanghara outstation in 1986 
Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs 
Gabrielle Pizzi Collection 

Exhibited: 
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri : paintings, 1973-1986, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1988 
Aborigena: Arte australiana contemporanea, Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, 29 June-26 August 2001 
Desert Art, Aboriginal Art Museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2002 
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 31 October 2003-26 January 2004; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 24 March-3 May 2004; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 14 May-11 July 2004; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 7 August-24 October 2004  
Mythology and Reality: Contemporary Aboriginal Art from the Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, Tarrawarra, 23 November 2008-15 March 2009  

Literature: 
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri: paintings, 1973-1986, London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1988, cover (illus.) 
Achille Bonito Oliva, Aborigena: Arte australiana contemporanea, Milan: Electa, 2001, p.41, cat.no.2 
Achille Bonito Oliva et al., Mythology and Reality: Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Desert Art from the Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, Jerusalem, 2003, p.27, cat.no.2 (illus.) 
Vivien Johnson, Clifford PossumTjapaltjarri, Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2003,pp.196-197 (illus.), p.245 (illus.), cat. no.45

Cf. For a related early painting of the same subject in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, see Lungkata's Two Sons at Warlugulong, 1976, in Vivien Johnson, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2003, p.87, (illus.).
 
In the 1990s Clifford Possum produced a series of paintings that feature the skeletons of the two sons of Lungkata, the ancestral Blue-Tongued Lizard. The two boys of the Tjangala kin group perished at Warlugulong in the original bushfire created by Lungkata as punishment for not sharing their catch with their father. Here, the skeletons lie beside their weapons against a charred and smoky landscape. The eminent authority on the art of Clifford Possum, Vivien Johnson, regards Untitled (Lungkata's Two Sons), 1986, as the prototype of the skeleton paintings (Johnson 2003, p. 196) which include Warlugolung, 1977, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Bushfire Dreaming, 1982, in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, and Two Tjangalas, 1996 in the Grantpirrie Collection (illustrated in Johnson 2003, pp. 94-95, 139 and 195 respectively).
 
The Warlugulong narrative is one of the founding dramas of the Anmatyerre, and of great significance to the artist as evidenced by the fact that Untitled (Lungkata's Two Sons), 1986, appeared on the cover of his retrospective exhibition catalogue Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri: Paintings 1973-1986, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1988. Johnson succinctly describes the effect of the artist's recurring motif: ‘There is an undeniable beauty in these skeletal symbols of human mortality which are animated by the skill and fluidity of the painter's technique' (ibid. p.196).
 
This painting is sold with an accompanying Papunya Tula Artists certificate