Justin Tjungurrayi Corby
Justin Tjungurrayi Corby: Paintings
from Ikuntji
"Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff) is a small Aboriginal community located about four hours drive (230 kilometres) directly west of Alice Springs. Today it houses between forty and sixty permanent residents but the population swells when families come in from the surrounding outstations. Since the federal government's intervention program, some of the residents have moved into Alice Springs where the liquor laws are more relaxed in contrast with the state of total prohibition experienced in Haasts Bluff. The small community is the home to the Ikuntji Arts Centre which was established in 1992, incorporated in 2007 and has served as home to a number of distinguished artists including Marlee Naparrula, Narputta Nangala, Daisy Napaltjarri Jugadai, Alice Nampitjinpa, Eunice Napanangka Jack, Mitjili Naparrula and Long Tom Tjapanangka. Although it has about forty artists on its books, presently the arts centre has between eight to ten 'core artists' who come in daily to paint. Most of the artists are quite senior in age, some even experiencing the early stages of dementia. It is in this context that Justin Tjungurrayi Corby as an artist is a most unusual.
Justin Corby was born on 16 August
1982 in Papunya and after schooling in Kintore and Alice Springs, he settled at
Haasts Bluff. Like many young people in this community he could only find employment
doing occasional jobs like fencing for the pastoral industry and collecting garbage
for the local authorities. In 2006 he started to paint and now at the age of 25
is possibly the youngest and most promising emerging artist at Ikuntji. He is
the son of the famous Papunya artist, Lindsay Corby Tjapaltjarri, who was the
full blood brother of David Corby Tjapaltjarri, one of the original first generation
Papunya Tula artists who formed under Geoffrey Bardon the Papunya Tula Artists
Pty Ltd in 1972. Papunya still has a resonance in art circles around the world
and has been viewed by many as the start of the renaissance in contemporary Aboriginal
art. Lindsay Corby having over the years lost many members of his family, his
father Jtunti Corby Tjapaltjarri and more recently the artists David Corby Tjapaltjarri
and Charlie Tarawa (Tjaruru) Tjungurrayi, all of whom were custodians of important
dreamings, was determined that his artistic and cultural heritage would not end
with his generation and gave his son Justin Corby permission to paint his family's
stories and instructed him in the ways of painting. Instruction was basically
through a process of osmosis and Justin recalls watching his father paint at Papunya
the stories of Charlie Tjungurrayi and "I realised that I must also paint
them".
What happened next was quite remarkable
and whereas most artists when inheriting their father's, mother's or husband's
dreamings, also frequently tended to inherit their style so that it became sometimes
difficult to tell their work apart, Justin Corby, except for a single trial canvas
where to some extent, and not very successfully, he tried to follow his father's
painted marks, subsequently branched out and created his own style with bold,
clearly articulated forms and vibrant colours. There is a simplified geometry
in his mark making, a rhythmic compositional arrangement and an intuitive colour
sense. In the year since he commenced painting, he has devised an artistic language
which is very distinctive and unusual in the context of the art of Western Desert.
He immediately attracted the attention of the art consultant Ken McGregor who
has arranged for Justin Corby this solo exhibition in Melbourne in January 2008
at the Metro 5 gallery.
The four main dreamings which
we encounter in his art in their narrative find a parallel in the paintings of
Charlie Tjungurrayi and those of his father Lindsay Corby, but in their interpretation
and stylistic rendering they are distinctive and strikingly unusual. The ancestral
sites around which these narratives unfold are near Jtunti (in Pintupi language
literally meaning a rock shelf or a cave) which is west of Nyirrpi and north-west
of Papunya in the direction of Kintore. Jtunti is the site of a major waterhole
or water soakage to where the people come to dig into the ground to find fresh
water which Justin Corby describes as "the best water for drinking".
A major dreaming associated with this site is the Budgerigar dreaming where in
the centre of the composition is the circular waterhole and around it on all sides
are the sources of water. Budgerigars are found near the waterhole and in Justin
Corby's words they "fly from all over and cover this land". The striking
thing about his rendition of this story is the boldness of geometric design and
the colouristic vibrancy.
The arts advisor and studio coordinator
at the Ikuntji Art Centre, Rachelle Burke, prepares for the artists primed linen
canvases which she covers with a base colour and on which the artists would then
paint on in acrylics. Unlike many of the other artists in the community, Justin
Corby prefers to paint by himself in his house, where he lives with his wife Benissa
Marks and their son Edward, rather than in the community workshop which is frequently
crowded with women painters, their extended families and an array of wonderful
wandering dingos which occasionally stray over the wet canvases. Whether it is
the insularity of his painting practice, his comparative youth in respect to the
other artists or his shy and retiring manner, Justin Corby's designs differ from
that of other artists. He generally works in a thick impasto dot-like technique
and physically builds up his surfaces to achieve a chromatic subtlety. In one
of his particularly beautiful Budgerigar dreaming paintings from 2007 there is
a very subtle light blue over a deep ultramarine blue, while in another, there
are different shades of reds, pinks and mauve colours. He has a natural and intuitive
colour sense and a gift for striking design.
A second major story in his art
he calls the Emu dreaming. The sacred nesting place for the emu is at Wurruwurrupa,
where the emu sits on its eggs, while its mate travels from the area of fecundity
near the Jtunti water soakage to bring it bush tucker. As it is a narrative about
travel, for Justin Corby this means that it has to be a vertical composition where
we have the distinctive sets of emu tracks travelling to and from Wurruwurrupa.
Intermixed between them are the much more passive parallel bands of colour with
circular objects made up of concentric circles, in other words, the emu eggs themselves.
When Charlie Tjungurrayi depicted this dreaming the rendition was quite different.
Justin Corby's Emu dreaming is strikingly simple and effective with a pulsating
rhythmic quality. However when I showed one of these paintings to his father Lindsay
Corby, he immediately recognised the story and approvingly noted that this was
Charlie Tjungurrayi's story which now his son Justin had to preserve.
All of Justin Corby's stories
topographically are interconnected. One of the most spectacular is the Travelling
snake dreaming. Here a snake was travelling from Jtunti to the big waters of a
lake when it encountered another snake unexpectedly and sped off towards the lake
by-passing Wurruwurrupa, the emu dreaming site, where in its haste the snake missed
the emu eggs and the cycle of emu regeneration was allowed to continue. However
on reaching the lake, the snake discovered that there was a grass fire and in
panic raced back to its waterhole. Compositionally and in terms of its colours
this is the most dynamic and dramatic of all of Justin Corby's painted narratives
where the patterns on the snake skin form the rushing central band while the topography
of the places encountered on the snake's journey are all brought together on the
outer margins of the composition. Here we have the symbolic depiction of the limestone
rocky outcrops, caves and the desert dunes. The artist and his father had no difficulty
in pointing out to me in the landscape the specific sites which are symbolically
encoded in the paintings of this story.
The final composition which Justin
Corby has both the permission and obligation to paint is the Rock wallaby dreaming,
sometimes also called the Kangaroo dreaming. Again this is a travelling story
where the rock wallaby commences its journey at the waterhole of Jtunti and travels
to Wurruwurrupa. The painting concentrates on the precise rendition of the wallaby
tracks which the artist conveys in a polychromatic palette. In one of his striking
canvases on a painted black base Justin Corby in thick dot-like brush strokes
marks these tracks in red, orange and yellow oxide to create a dazzling richness.
Although he paints a number of versions of this dreaming, no two paintings are
alike and as an endlessly inventive artist he arrives at new and unexpected colour
combinations in each painting.
Several months ago, with prospect
of a major exhibition in Melbourne, Justin Corby abandoned working as a fencer
and doing odd jobs around the community to concentrate full time on his paintings.
While quiet and retiring by nature, he has now become a role model for other young
men in the community. Another young artist, Desmond Impu Tjapaltjarri who is the
grandson of the well known painter Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri, in the past couple
of months has also turned his hand to painting and has also found ready recognition
with art collectors. In what at times appears as a bleak and harsh environment
with few prospects for employment and personal advancement, Justin Tjungurrayi
Corby through his art is celebrating a fresh flowering of the brilliant Papunya
tradition".
Professor Sasha Grishin
AM, FAHA
The Sir William Dobell Professor of Art History
Australian National
University
