Remembering Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri
Art dealer Ralph Hobbs shares a personal account of working with his friend the late, great Pitjantjatjara artist Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri.
I met Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri in 2007
at his home in the little desert community of Watiyawanu, Mount Liebig – about an hour’s drive west of Papunya. It was built in the early 1980s and is a curious mix of buildings, typical of the remote townships. Papunya is famous as the epicentre of the Western Desert painting movement of the early 1970s. This movement would eventually change the perception of Australian visual culture in the eyes of the world.
Mount Liebig had been built to help placate the inter-tribal disharmony between Luritja and Pintupi people. It also provided a settlement between the network of desert communities, from Haarts Bluff and Papunya, to the far west homelands around Kintore and beyond. It is geographically important for those who live and travel in the desert today. They still have a strong sense of the ‘nomad’ coursing through their veins – although it’s been decades since they, or their parents and grandparents, had been encouraged to leave their ancestral homelands to come into the seemingly-easier white man’s life. As history has demonstrated, what was promised and what has transpired have been two different things.
The morning we met was bright and cool, with the sunlight bouncing off the imposing Liebig Range. I was travelling with Ken McGregor, the man who can be credited with taking Bill Whiskey to the world with an extraordinary exhibition of paintings in London in 2007. There are few roads in the desert that Ken hasn’t travelled. As we pulled up to the Watiyawanu Art Centre, we were greeted by the enigmatic .. Subscribe to read this article in full
