Tjilpi Mankurpa | Three Old Men

Kunmanara (Harry) Tjutjuna (c.1930–2019), Kunmanara (Dickie) Minyintiri (c.1915–2014) and Kunmanara (Pepai) Jangala Carroll (c.1950–2021) stand among the most momentous Pitjantjatjara artists of their generation. Their lives and stories travel the length of Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands and stretch northwest toward Pintupi country. Each was a senior lawman, and each carried deep authority within their communities, especially Pukatja (Ernabella) where all three called home. Their legacy as painters is held through the continued work of Ernabella Arts, the oldest continuously running art centre in the country. However, this legacy also extends far beyond the APY Lands and their own lives, as each painting is a deeply personal declaration of identity traversing the ancestral and autobiographical, revealing a spiritual dimension in which self, land and story are inseparable.

Bringing together these three artists in Tjilpi Mankurpa we see each artist making an assertion of I Am. Dickie Minyintiri proclaimed “I’m wati putjitja, a man of the bush” who worked as a “bush doctor” throwing his “spirit objects around in the bush”, healing people and keeping the community safe.[i] Harry Tjutjuna asserted “I am Wati Wanka, the Spider Man”, a powerful ancestral healer whose story animates his Country.[ii] Pepai Carroll described as “wati wiru”—a good man—one who carries responsibility to his home of Ernabella while bravely seeking deeper knowledge of his ancestral country further north.[iii] These statements are not metaphors; they are declarations of being. Through painting, each artist affirms his identity as custodian, healer and storyteller.

Both Minyintiri and Tjutjuna shared remarkably parallel lives. Born in the bush they spent their early years living according to orthodox, pre-contact Law before eventually moving to Ernabella Mission as young men. Both were respected ngangkari—a traditional healer—that carried deep authority in ceremonial life, kinship responsibilities and the transmission of ancestral knowledge. Carroll on the other hand was born in Haasts Bluff and later moved to Papunya before travelling to Ernabella, where he lived for the next fifty years. All three began painting later in life, during the mid-2000s, and their artistic voices quickly emerged as singular and powerful.

Together, Tjutjuna, Minyintiri and Carroll embody a generation of Anangu elders whose lives spanned the transition from traditional desert life to the modern world. They witnessed first contact, mission settlement and the social transformations that followed. Each canvas holds cultural knowledge, spiritual authority and lived experience that cannot be replicated. These three men occupy a rare position in both art and life. Through their paintings they declare, with quiet certainty and immense authority I am.

[i] Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council Aboriginal Corporation. (2013). Traditional Healers of the Central Desert: Ngangkari. Magabala Books. P. 114.

[ii] Ananguku Arts and Culture Aboriginal Corporation. (2010). Tjukurpa Pulkatjara: The power of the law (E. Tregenza, Ed.). Kent Town, SA: Wakefield Press. P. 7.

[iii] Briggs, B., Carroll, A. M., & Scholes, L. (2021). Pepai Jangala Carroll: Ngayulu nyanganyi ngura winki (I can see all those places). Mile End, SA: JamFactory / Wakefield Press. P.21.

Exhibition Catalogue (PDF)