Bears Papunya Tula Artists catalogue No. MN911255 on reverse

Painted at Kintore in December 1991
Sotheby's Fine Aboriginal and Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 17 June 1996, Lot 31, illustrated on the cover
The Thomas Vroom Collection, The Netherlands

Papunya Tula - Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 18 August to 12 November 2000

Hetti Perkins & Hanah Fink, Papunya Tula - Genesis and Genius Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2000, p.110, illus. p.283
Georges Petitjean, Contemporary Aboriginal Art, The AAMU and Dutch Collections, Uitgeverij Snoeck, The Netherlands, 2010 p.28, illus. 

Cf. John Kean, ‘Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri’ in Judith Ryan and Philip Batty, Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 2011, pp.161-162, for biographical information relating to the artist.

Unframed and mounted on a professional stretcher. Good order overall with no repairs or restoration.
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This painting is sold with an accompanying Papunya Tula Artists certificate, that reads in part, “This painting depicts the Wallaby Dreaming at Tjunginga west of the Kintore community just inside Western Australia. This is a hill site with soakage water.”

Although this work is entitled Wallaby Dreaming at Tjunginga, the subject matter is in fact Brush-tailed Bettong (Purrtutjurri) Dreaming at the site of Tjunginpa.

John Kean, in his essay on the artist for the accompanying catalogue to the exhibition Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art, writes with r💧egards to the artist and related works from this painting’s series,

“Namarari’s childhood was spent in a world where middle-sized marsupials abounded. Many of these creatures are extinct, while some species such as the bilby, are present in dramatically reduced ranges, having suffered from predation by introduced animals including cats and foxes… Namarari’s depiction of the nesting places of Tjakalpa (Desert Bandicoot), Mingatjura (Golden Bandicoot) and Purrtutjurru (Brush-tailed Bettong) bring to life animals that have now disappeared from inland Australia. His gen𒆙eration was the last to have first hand knowledge of the full suite of desert marsupials, and his poetic record of these species is an invaluable bequest. The disappearance of animals regarded as the totemic ancestors of desert people greatly concerned Namarari’s generation and this set of paintings can be seen as a profound meditation on their persistence in memory… Namarari outlived many of his fellow founding members of Papunya Tula artists, continuing to paint with brilliance and focus until the end of his life. He won the National Aboriginal Art Award in 1991 (the year of this painting) and was the first recipient of the Australia Council’s eꦰsteemed Red Ochre Award ‘for his outstanding contribution to the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at a national and international level’. He is represented in prestigious collections in Australia and internationally.

The still water of Namarari’s artistic soul ran deep, and the divine poetry of his best work, 🌄ꦕlike the man, remains an enigma.” (ibid Pp.161-162)