Punttu family

The portraits by both Harold Morrison Jakkamarra (Portrait 7) and Kerry Waistcoat Nappanangka (Portrait 6) show young Warumungu people living in Tennant Creek as they see themselves today. Harold’s portrait is reminiscent of an action hero, an animated character about to leap out of the screen of a wild cartoon. It is a no-holds-barred expression of ownership, ‘don’t mess with me’ attitude. Kerry’s drawing shows a young woman ready to go out for a night on the town, a common event for young people in Tennant Creek. Though the imagery by Morrison and Waistcoat may not be seen as ‘traditional’, differing widely from the profile of a stereotyped Aboriginal person seen on countless t-towels in souvenir shops, they are nevertheless informing us that appearances can be deceptive. The people portrayed in these two prints are both living within the boundaries of Aboriginal law, observing and reflecting on punttu.

The procedure for making the prints was fairly simple. Artists were given a piece of paper the same size as the finished print, where they drew a black and white image of themselves or the subject of their portrait with black ink. This image was then transferred onto film and a photo-stencil was made of the black and white artwork. The artist then indicated on either a proof from the photo-stencil or on their original drawing where and which colours they wanted to put down. The colour runs varied from two to seven. The colours were printed using a combination of hand-cut paper stencils or photo-stencils where the colour was cut onto a hand-cut film. The prints have a boldness and directness in part because it was as direct a process as possible, using a black outline as the basis of the work (except for Ian Waistcoat Jappanangka’s work), but also because a simple graphic iconography is becoming something of a stylistic signifier for art from the Tennant Creek region.