George Tjungurrayi (b. c. 1947) is a highly respected senior Pintupi artist. Born around Walawala near Kiwirrkura in Western Australia, he left the Gibson Desert in his late teens and moved between Mount Doreen, Yuendumu and Papunya, where he settled from the early 1960s. In 1976 Tjungurrayi and his oldest brother Willy Tjungurrayi began painting with Papunya Tula Artists guided by senior Pintupi painters. Over the course of his career he has developed his own style which focuses on abstraction, a minimal colour palette and refined lines that undulate across the surface of his works. Tjungurrayi's paintings are topographical depictions of his Country and areas of cultural significance. From the 1970s Tjungurrayi, his wife Nanupu Nangala and their five children moved throughout the region settling in Kintore in the early 1980s where he continues to live and work. Tjungurrayi's work is held in a number of national and international collections, and was included in the 21st Biennale of Sydney in 2020.
Matthÿs Gerber treated this portrait as a series of coloured planes, contour mapping the artist's face as a cartographer might map a landscape, to evoke Tjungarrayi's shimmery, hovery depictions of Country. It is one of a series of searching portraits in which Gerber attempted to merge portraiture, landscape and colour-field painting.
Gift of Pamela Hansford 2007. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
© Matthÿs Gerber
A portrait of Pintupi artist George Tjungurrayi by Matthÿs Gerber created in 2002.
Oil on canvas, unframed, measuring 180 centimetres high by 135 centimetres wide.
Tjungurrayi’s facial features have been simplified and abstracted into a series of coloured planes, which map out the contours, the ridges and troughs of his face like an aerial map of the land. It is an extreme closeup, with his forehead, outer edges of the cheeks and upper chin cropped by the edges of the canvas.
His face is described in four solid colours of magenta, lime green, ultramarine blue and red orange, that are painted in a combination of competing cool and warm tones. The majority of the face is shaded in magenta. The ridge of his wide nose, apples of his cheeks, lips and forehead, are highlighted in lime green and edged in a deckled ultramarine blue with the highest points picked out in touches of deckled red orange.
The artist has put a circle design in the bottom right corner; a red-orange dot with a concentric circle of lime green and another in ultramarine blue around the dot.
Audio description written and voiced by Alana Sivell
Pamela Hansford (1 portrait)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Alistair McGhie writes about the portraits of three of Australia's top professional cyclists: Cadel Evans, Stuart O'Grady and Robbie McEwen painted by Matthys Gerber.
Chris Chapman explains how Matthys Gerber bridges the gap between abstraction and portraiture.
