Snake Dreamingby Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula

Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula (also known as Turkey Tolson) was born c.1938 and passed away in 2001. Turkey Tolson was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region.

Born near Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory, Turkey Tolson was a major figure in the Papunya Tula art movement, and the longest-serving chairman of the Papunya Tula Artists company.

Son of Toba Tjakamarra, one of the first Pintupi people to come into European settlements out of the Western Desert, Turkey Tolson was born near Haasts Bluff, west of Alice Springs, Northern Territory. Sources differ on his birth year: researcher and art historian Vivien Johnson gives an estimate of 1938, while the National Museum of Australia suggests 1943. His mother was one of Toba's three wives: the other two (his stepmothers) are the artists Wintjiya Napaltjarri and Tjunkiya Napaltjarri. He has five half-siblings, the children of Toba and Wintjiya: sons Bundy (born 1953) and Lindsey (born 1961 and now deceased); and daughters Rubilee (born 1955), Claire (born 1958) and Eileen (born 1960).

'Tjupurrula' (in Pintupi) ) is a skin name, one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners and may be associated with particular totems. Although they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans. Thus 'Turkey Tolson' is the element of the artist's name that is specifically his.

Turkey Tolson worked in the stock camp at Haasts Bluff as a young man, and only came to know his birth country in 1959, after his initiation. He married and with his family moved to Papunya, Northern Territory at the time of its construction. His first wife died, and after remarrying in 1984 he moved to Kintore, which lies within his family's traditional country. Later in life he suffered heart trouble, and was in Alice Springs receiving dialysis treatment at the time of his death in 2001.

Contemporary Indigenous art of the western desert began when Indigenous men at Papunya began painting in 1971, assisted by teacher Geoffrey Bardon. Soon afterwards they established Papunya Tula, a company owned and controlled by the artists, which went on to be Australia's pre-eminent Indigenous art centre. Turkey Tolson was one of the first to paint: his name appears in the company's records in 1973. He was influential within the Papunya Tula movement and spent a period as the longest-serving chairman of the company. In addition to painting, Turkey Tolson also made prints, with an example held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.

Turkey Tolson's painting style developed in two broad phases. His early work was classical, tightly controlled and with a strong sense of symmetry characterising the geometrical arrangement of symbols and the patterns of dots surrounding them. After his father's death, the artist took over ceremonial responsibility for his country. This shift to a senior place in the community was associated with a looser style and a more individualised iconography. It was during this period that he created the work Straightening spears at Ilyingaungau (1990), held by the Art Gallery of South Australia. This painting was described by Vivian Johnson as his masterpiece,[and by obituarist Rebecca Hossack as his most famous work: "a series of shimmering horizontal lines representing spears being heated and straightened over a fire by Tolson's ancestors".

Major exhibitions in which Turkey Tolson's work has featured have included Papunya Tula: Out of the Australian desert at the National Museum of Australia in 2010, and Almanac: The gift of Ann Lewis AO at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, also in 2010.

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