Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula
Encyclopedia
Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula (sometimes just Turkey Tolson) (c. 1938 – 10 August 2001) was a Pintupi
-speaking Indigenous artist
from Australia's
Western Desert
region. Born near Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory
, Turkey Tolson was a major figure in the Papunya Tula
art movement, and the longest-serving chairman of the Papunya Tula Artists company.
Creator of the work Straightening spears at Ilyingaungau, Tolson's paintings are held by the Art Gallery of South Australia
, National Gallery of Victoria
and the National Museum of Australia
.
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Son of Toba Tjakamarra, one of the first Pintupi
people to come into European settlements out of the Western Desert, Turkey Tolson was born near Haasts Bluff
, west of Alice Springs, Northern Territory
. Sources differ on his birth year: researcher and art historian Vivien Johnson gives an estimate of 1938, while the National Museum of Australia
suggests 1943. His mother was one of Toba's three wives: the other two (his stepmothers) are the artists Wintjiya Napaltjarri
and Tjunkiya Napaltjarri
. He has five half-siblings, the children of Toba and Wintjiya: sons Bundy (born 1953) and Lindsey (born 1961 and now deceased); and daughters Rubilee (born 1955), Claire (born 1958) and Eileen (born 1960).
'Tjupurrula' (in Pintupi) (also commonly seen as 'Jupurrula', this being the Warlpiri spelling) is a skin name
, one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners and may be associated with particular totems. Although they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans. Thus 'Turkey Tolson' is the element of the artist's name that is specifically his.
Turkey Tolson worked in the stock camp at Haasts Bluff as a young man, and only came to know his birth country in 1959, after his initiation
. He married and with his family moved to Papunya, Northern Territory
at the time of its construction. His first wife died, and after remarrying in 1984 he moved to Kintore
, which lies within his family's traditional country. Later in life he suffered heart trouble, and was in Alice Springs receiving dialysis
treatment at the time of his death in 2001.
. Soon afterwards they established Papunya Tula
, a company owned and controlled by the artists, which went on to be Australia's pre-eminent Indigenous art centre. Turkey Tolson was one of the first to paint: his name appears in the company's records in 1973. He was influential within the Papunya Tula movement and spent a period as the longest-serving chairman of the company. In addition to painting, Turkey Tolson also made prints, with an example held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia
.
Turkey Tolson's painting style developed in two broad phases. His early work was classical, tightly controlled and with a strong sense of symmetry characterising the geeometrical arrangement of symbols and the patterns of dots surrounding them. After his father's death, the artist took over ceremonial responsibility for his country. This shift to a senior place in the community was associated with a looser style and a more individualised iconography. It was during this period that he created the work Straightening spears at Ilyingaungau (1990), held by the Art Gallery of South Australia
. This painting was described by Vivian Johnson as his masterpiece, and by obituarist Rebecca Hossack as his most famous work: "a series of shimmering horizontal lines representing spears being heated and straightened over a fire by Tolson's ancestors".
Major exhibitions in which Turkey Tolson's work has featured have included Papunya Tula: Out of the Australian desert at the National Museum of Australia in 2010, and Almanac: The gift of Ann Lewis AO at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
, also in 2010.
Pintupi language
Pintupi is an indigenous Australian language. It is one of the Wati languages of the large Southwest branch of the Pama–Nyungan family. It is one of the varieties of the Western Desert Language ....
-speaking Indigenous artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
from Australia's
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
Western Desert
Western Desert cultural bloc
The Western Desert cultural bloc or just Western Desert is a cultural region in Australia covering about 600,000 square kilometres, including the Gibson Desert, the Great Victoria Desert, the Great Sandy and Little Sandy Deserts in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia...
region. Born near Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory
Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory
Haasts Bluff, also known as Ikuntji, is an Indigenous Australian community in Central Australia, a region of the Northern Territory. The community is located in the MacDonnell Shire local government area, west of Alice Springs...
, Turkey Tolson was a major figure in the Papunya Tula
Papunya Tula
Papunya Tula, or Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, is an artist cooperative formed in 1972 that is owned and operated by Aboriginal people from the Western Desert of Australia. The group is known for its innovative work with the Western Desert Art Movement, popularly referred to as "dot painting"...
art movement, and the longest-serving chairman of the Papunya Tula Artists company.
Creator of the work Straightening spears at Ilyingaungau, Tolson's paintings are held by the Art Gallery of South Australia
Art Gallery of South Australia
The Art Gallery of South Australia , located on the cultural boulevard of North Terrace in Adelaide, is the premier visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of over 35,000 works of art, making it, after the National Gallery of Victoria, the largest state...
, National Gallery of Victoria
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
and the National Museum of Australia
National Museum of Australia
The National Museum of Australia was formally established by the National Museum of Australia Act 1980. The National Museum preserves and interprets Australia's social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation....
.
Life
Pintupi
Pintupi refers to an Australian Aboriginal group who are part of the Western Desert cultural group and whose homeland is in the area west of Lake MacDonald and Lake Mackay in Western Australia. These people moved into the Aboriginal communities of Papunya and Haasts Bluff in the west of the...
people to come into European settlements out of the Western Desert, Turkey Tolson was born near Haasts Bluff
Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory
Haasts Bluff, also known as Ikuntji, is an Indigenous Australian community in Central Australia, a region of the Northern Territory. The community is located in the MacDonnell Shire local government area, west of Alice Springs...
, west of Alice Springs, Northern Territory
Alice Springs, Northern Territory
Alice Springs is the second largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Popularly known as "the Alice" or simply "Alice", Alice Springs is situated in the geographic centre of Australia near the southern border of the Northern Territory...
. Sources differ on his birth year: researcher and art historian Vivien Johnson gives an estimate of 1938, while the National Museum of Australia
National Museum of Australia
The National Museum of Australia was formally established by the National Museum of Australia Act 1980. The National Museum preserves and interprets Australia's social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation....
suggests 1943. His mother was one of Toba's three wives: the other two (his stepmothers) are the artists Wintjiya Napaltjarri
Wintjiya Napaltjarri
Wintjiya Napaltjarri , and also known as Wintjia Napaltjarri No. 1, is a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region...
and Tjunkiya Napaltjarri
Tjunkiya Napaltjarri
Tjunkiya Napaltjarri was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region...
. He has five half-siblings, the children of Toba and Wintjiya: sons Bundy (born 1953) and Lindsey (born 1961 and now deceased); and daughters Rubilee (born 1955), Claire (born 1958) and Eileen (born 1960).
'Tjupurrula' (in Pintupi) (also commonly seen as 'Jupurrula', this being the Warlpiri spelling) is a skin name
Australian Aboriginal kinship
Australian Aboriginal kinship is the system of law governing social interaction, particularly marriage, in traditional Australian Aboriginal culture...
, one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners and may be associated with particular totems. Although they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans. Thus 'Turkey Tolson' is the element of the artist's name that is specifically his.
Turkey Tolson worked in the stock camp at Haasts Bluff as a young man, and only came to know his birth country in 1959, after his initiation
Rite of passage
A rite of passage is a ritual event that marks a person's progress from one status to another. It is a universal phenomenon which can show anthropologists what social hierarchies, values and beliefs are important in specific cultures....
. He married and with his family moved to Papunya, Northern Territory
Papunya, Northern Territory
Papunya is a small Indigenous Australian community of about 299 people roughly 240 km northwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, Australia...
at the time of its construction. His first wife died, and after remarrying in 1984 he moved to Kintore
Kintore, Northern Territory
Kintore is a remote settlement in the Northern Territory of Australia, located approximately 530 km west of Alice Springs and close to the border with Western Australia. At the 2001 census, Kintore had a population of 691, of which 95% identified themselves as Aboriginal...
, which lies within his family's traditional country. Later in life he suffered heart trouble, and was in Alice Springs receiving dialysis
Dialysis
In medicine, dialysis is a process for removing waste and excess water from the blood, and is primarily used to provide an artificial replacement for lost kidney function in people with renal failure...
treatment at the time of his death in 2001.
Art
Contemporary Indigenous art of the western desert began when Indigenous men at Papunya began painting in 1971, assisted by teacher Geoffrey BardonGeoffrey Bardon
Geoffrey Robert Bardon AM 1940, Sydney – 6 May 2003) was an Australian school teacher who was instrumental in creating the Aboriginal art of the Western Desert movement, and in bringing Australian indigenous art to the attention of the world....
. Soon afterwards they established Papunya Tula
Papunya Tula
Papunya Tula, or Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, is an artist cooperative formed in 1972 that is owned and operated by Aboriginal people from the Western Desert of Australia. The group is known for its innovative work with the Western Desert Art Movement, popularly referred to as "dot painting"...
, a company owned and controlled by the artists, which went on to be Australia's pre-eminent Indigenous art centre. Turkey Tolson was one of the first to paint: his name appears in the company's records in 1973. He was influential within the Papunya Tula movement and spent a period as the longest-serving chairman of the company. In addition to painting, Turkey Tolson also made prints, with an example held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
.
Turkey Tolson's painting style developed in two broad phases. His early work was classical, tightly controlled and with a strong sense of symmetry characterising the geeometrical arrangement of symbols and the patterns of dots surrounding them. After his father's death, the artist took over ceremonial responsibility for his country. This shift to a senior place in the community was associated with a looser style and a more individualised iconography. It was during this period that he created the work Straightening spears at Ilyingaungau (1990), held by the Art Gallery of South Australia
Art Gallery of South Australia
The Art Gallery of South Australia , located on the cultural boulevard of North Terrace in Adelaide, is the premier visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of over 35,000 works of art, making it, after the National Gallery of Victoria, the largest state...
. This painting was described by Vivian Johnson as his masterpiece, and by obituarist Rebecca Hossack as his most famous work: "a series of shimmering horizontal lines representing spears being heated and straightened over a fire by Tolson's ancestors".
Major exhibitions in which Turkey Tolson's work has featured have included Papunya Tula: Out of the Australian desert at the National Museum of Australia in 2010, and Almanac: The gift of Ann Lewis AO at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia is an Australian museum solely dedicated to exhibiting, interpreting and collecting contemporary art, both from across Australia and around the world...
, also in 2010.
Major collections
- Art Gallery of New South WalesArt Gallery of New South WalesThe Art Gallery of New South Wales , located in The Domain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was established in 1897 and is the most important public gallery in Sydney and the fourth largest in Australia...
- Art Gallery of South AustraliaArt Gallery of South AustraliaThe Art Gallery of South Australia , located on the cultural boulevard of North Terrace in Adelaide, is the premier visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of over 35,000 works of art, making it, after the National Gallery of Victoria, the largest state...
- National Gallery of AustraliaNational Gallery of AustraliaThe National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
- National Gallery of VictoriaNational Gallery of VictoriaThe National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
- National Museum of AustraliaNational Museum of AustraliaThe National Museum of Australia was formally established by the National Museum of Australia Act 1980. The National Museum preserves and interprets Australia's social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation....
External links
- Straightening spears at Ilyingaungau (1990), at the Art Gallery of South Australia