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Dreaming stories · Tingari Dreaming Cycle
The Tingari Cycle refers to specific Dreamings and ancient laws of the Pintupi and Luritja language groups of the expansive Central and Western Desert regions, and encompasses a cultural lattice of rituals, sacred sites, social structure and ancient law.
The Tingari Dreaming Cycle hails from an ancient Creation era, where ancestral elders and sacred beings moved across the land, creating all the features of the landscape and the natural world as they went. Each move they made informs the story that can be read in the contours and detail of the land, if you know where — or how — to look.
A note on sacred knowledge
Tingari business is deeply sacred, and therefore much information is kept secret, restricted only to initiated men or people possessing the appropriate levels of seniority, so very little information about the Dreaming Cycle is available to the public.
The Creation era
During the ancient Creation era, sacred beings and ancestral elders roamed the open, featureless land. As they travelled, they performed rituals of song and dance, giving form and feature to the desert landscape.
Rockholes, riverbeds, hills and roundels, flora and fauna — all elements of the natural environment were created as the Tingari ancestors moved across vast expanses of the desert.
Pintupi & LuritjaThe language groups whose Dreamings and ancient laws the Cycle belongs to.21,000 km²The estimated expanse of desert covered by the traditional lands of the Pintupi people.Tens of thousands of yearsHow long the song cycles have been passed down from initiated elders to younger generations.Song cycles and custodianship
The creation stories of the Tingari ancestors have been embodied into song cycles; oral narratives that encompass the traditional laws, beliefs, and social structures that guide Pintupi and Luritja people, and that have been passed down from initiated elders to the younger generations for tens of thousands of years.
Custodianship of sacred Tingari sites is handed down through family lines, in accordance with particular kinship or ‘skin’ groups.
Performing the associated song cycles and rituals of sacred sites ensures the passing on of custodial rights, and pays homage to the sacred ancestors — preserving the spiritual ‘health’ of Country and its Dreaming songlines.
Tingari in paint
The emergence of painted Tingari designs coincided with the genesis of the Western Desert contemporary art movement that dawned in the early 1970s — notably with the establishment of the famed Papunya Tula Artists Co-op, as they commenced exhibiting artworks by Pintupi artists such as Ronnie Tjampajinpa and Walangkura Napananangka. For the wider history of that movement, see Central Desert Art.
The Pintupi Nine
Several members of the ‘Pintupi Nine’ — a family group that emerged from the Gibson Desert in 1984 with no previous awareness of European colonisation — forged highly acclaimed artistic careers by painting aspects of the Tingari Cycle, namely three of the brothers, Warlimirrnga, Walala, and Thomas (dec.) Tjapaltjarri.
Country and law
Intersected by songlines of the Tingari ancestors, the traditional lands of the Pintupi people encompass a vast expanse of desert — an estimated 21,000 square kilometres. As such, Pintupi artists paint representations of sacred sites and law as it applies to their respective countries.
The optical idiom
Optical-style designs were created by artists such as George Hairbrush Tjungarrayi; gestural, contrasting lines that curve and fold in recurring, hypnotic patterns.
Reading the designs
Designs associated with Tingari Dreaming have come to be recognised by their abstraction of geometric forms; concentric circles, rectangular structures, and linear patterns, often mapped or interconnected using the dotting technique that is typical of the Central and Western Desert art movements.
Concentric circles
Geometric abstraction
One of the recurring forms by which Tingari designs have come to be recognised.
Rectangular structures
Geometric abstraction
Mapped or interconnected across the surface of the canvas.
Linear patterns
Geometric abstraction
Often interconnected using the dotting technique typical of the Central and Western Desert art movements.
Pintupi artists have created unique designs that translate aspects of the sacred Tingari Song Cycles into a visual language, evoking the quiet power of the undulating desert landscape; an artistic meditation on the traditions and laws that stretch far back into the distance of time.
Paintings of the Tingari Cycle
This Is Aboriginal Art · 87 Todd Mall, Alice Springs, NT · (08) 8952 1544 · info@tiaa.com.au
