The Ceremony Is the Place: The Past Is the Present
Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi, Classic Pintupi Water Dreaming, 1972

Classic Pintupi Water Dreaming was painted in 1972 by Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi on a discarded piece of composition board, a distorted rectangle in shape. At that time, the painters would use anything they could lay their hands on as a support. The painting’s structure inventively transposes the spatial organization of traditional designs used in body painting during sacred ceremonies. These designs evoke the mythological/ancestral story that is important to the painter’s identity, specifically regarding a place that serves as a water source. There may also be reference to the flooding rains that occurred at Papunya at the time.