Provenance
Papunya Tula Artists, Northern Territory, cat. No. CP791224
Dr Vivien Johnson, Northern Territory
The Estates of Professor Peter and Mrs Jane Johnson
Aboriginal Art, Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 24 November 2009, lot 58
The Le Pley Collection, Western Australia
Exhibited
Literature
Aboriginal paintings from the Tim and Vivien Johnson Collection, Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand 1991.
Vivien Johnson, The Art of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Sydney: Gordon and Breach Arts International, Sydney 1994, p. 77, pl. 23.
Vivien Johnson, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Art Gallery of South. Australia, Adelaide 2003, p. 121 and p. 237, pl. 24.
For a comparison with three other major works from the period in which this painting was created, see Two Men Fighting, 1978, and Dreamings of Napperby Station, 1980, the latter in the Holmes à Court Collection, in Johnson 1994, p. 76, plate 22, and p. 90, plate 30, and in Johnson 2003, p. 119 and p. 125 respectively; and Possum Dreaming (Yalkuti), 1981, also in the Holmes à Court Collection in. Johnson 1994, p. 88, plate 28. See also Yuutjutiyungu 1979, in Johnson 1994, pp. 70-71, pl. 20 and Johnson 2003, pp. 108-109, (illus.).
Significant part I 2023, D'Lan Contemporary Pty Ltd, Melbourne, p. 55
Description
From October 1976 to July 1979 Clifford Possum created his most celebrated series of large canvases: five monumental, innovative canvases that mapped out the artist's major patrilineally inherited Dreamings in such a way as to integrate the sacred diagrams of ceremonial ground paintings and the topographical conventions of European maps. The series commenced with Warlugulong, 1976, now in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and ended with Yuutjutiyungu, 1979, in the Kelton / Raschle Collection, Switzerland. The series includes Warlugulong, 1977, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. This group of paintings is of such significance in the artist's corpus that the main authority on his work. Vivien Johnson, dubbed the series 'The Title Deeds' (V. Johnson, 1994, p. 49, and 2003, p. 86).
Possum Dreaming at Napperby, 1979, was the first painting created by Clifford Possum after he had completed the series with Yuutjutiyungu, 1979.
Possum Dreaming reveals a shift in direction for the artist; the background dotting, according to Johnson, has been 'scaled up, and is applied with a virtuosity .. heralding an era in which immaculate craftsmanship would become one of the hallmarks of Clifford Possum's style' (Johnson 2003, p.. 120). The painting describes the travels of a Possum ancestor, Tjukunypa, across a Landscape marked by areas of dry bushes (the sections outlined in pink). Tjukunypa's paw prints are bisected by meandering lines which are the marks left by his dragging trail. Tjukunypa travelled both over and beneath the surface of the earth. Clifford Possum's innovative and experimental approach to paintings is evident again here: The partially obscured possum prints in the central column of tracks indicate his underground journey, while the sets of concentric circles represent the places where Tjukunypa entered the ground and re-emerged from it.
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