Willy Tjungurrayi

Willy is the brother of George “Hairbrush” Tjungarrayi and the late Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi. He was born about 1930 at Patjantj and began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1976.

One of the most sought after painters of the Western Desert, Willy Tjungurrayi is a senior Pintupi man, entitled by his ancestry and communal position to paint the sacred and secret Tingari cycle.

Willy paints stories from the Tingari Dreaming song cycle, and the land around Haast’s Bluff, Lake Mackay and Lake MacDonald. This painting illustrates the sandhills and the fierce hailstorm that killed the ancestral Tingari Men in the Dreamtime. Willy Tjungarrayi  has been acknowledged as one of the great colorists of contemporary Aboriginal painting and his work is much sought after and is held many major private and public collections.

Selected Exhibitons

2004 – Papunya Tula Artists 2004: Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; Australian Aboriginal Art Collector’s Exhibition, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne.
2003 – Kintore Kiwirrkura 2003: Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne.
1994 – Central Australian Aboriginal Art and Craft Exhibition, Araluen Centre, Alice Springs; Yiribana, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
1991 – The Painted Dream: Contemporary Aboriginal Paintings from the Tim and Vivien Johnson Collection, Auckland City Art Gallery and Te Whare Taonga o Aoteroa National Art Gallery, New Zealand.
1989 – Aboriginal Art: The Continuing Tradition, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
1988 – Australian Aboriginal Graphics from the Collection of the Flinders University Art Museum.
1987 – Art and Aboriginality, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, UK.
1985 – Dot and Circle, a retrospective survey of the Aboriginal acrylic paintings of Central Australia, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne.
1983 – Papunya: paintings from the Central Australian Desert, touring exhibition, USA and Europe.
1982 – Georges Gallery, Melbourne; Brisbane Festival; Mori Gallery, Sydney.