DJP
22. Corroberee Story, Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, 24 x 36 inches
(61 x 92 cms) Papunya, 1988 
Billy
Stockman is one of the forefathers of the contemporary art movement,
founded at Papunya in 1971, and one of the last of the founding artists
still amongst the living. Billy Stockman is now in his mid-eighties,
frail and living in the Hettie Perkins Center in Alice, his painting
days long behind him. But his accomplishments live on in his work,
which is represented in major public and private collections throughout
Australia, including the National Gallery at Canberra, the Robert
Holmes a Court collection, the National Gallery of South Australia,
and the Art Gallery of New South Wales amongst numerous others.
He was instrumental in the painting of the Papunya mural, which sparked
the contemporary art movement's early growth and development. He is
one of the most distinctive Aboriginal colorists and is renowned for
his cool modern compositional sensibility. His use of interlocking
color fields to create a compositional Push/Pull is reminiscent of
the work of Hans Hoffman, Serge Poliacoff, and Jasper Johns. His distinctive
"floating circles" draw comparison to Joan Miro.
Billy is a respected tribal elder. During the 1960's he worked with
the Pintupi people helping them to adjust to their new way of life
as they relocated from the desert to the settlements. From 1975 to
1979 he held an important role as a member of the Aboriginal Arts
Board. Billy was also one of the first to leave the established mission
settlements, preferring to return to the land.
The design is concerned with formal ceremonial arrangements at a sacred
site, depicting the layout of the grounds as a whole as well as the
ceremonial dancing that occurs there. This painting reflects the cyclical
nature of good seasons, which allow for large concentrations of people
to gather for ceremony. Periods of massing for ceremonial occasions
and then dispersing in smaller groups across the land, follow in endless
succession, conforming to precedents established in the Dreamtime.
