Patrick Tjungurrayi

Patrick Tjungurrayi (c. 1935-1945 — December 2017), also known as Patrick Olodoodi or Patrick Yala Uluturti, was a Pintupi senior law man, painter and health advocate.

Life and painting

Tjungurrayi was born near Puntujarrpa, west of Kiwirrkurra, in Central Australia. He grew up on Pintupi county, alongside the Canning Stock Route, and encountered 'no white man' until he was a young man and a helicopter flew nearby and terrified him and his family: this included his brother Tjuwi who became known as 'helicopter'. Following this Tjungurrayi and his family had many interactions with 'the white man' and there was a lot of violence and Tjungurrayi can remember many killings. Soon after this he moved to Balgo where they stayed until the establishment of the first Pintupi homelands community, Kintore, in the early 1980s; although Patrick always travelled between the two as well as to a number of other communities throughout the region where he was a labourer, building the houses that would become the community. By the late 1990s Tgungurrayi was refining his vision and creating increasingly powerful paintings, which coincided with a decrease in the use of pigment, Colour was, however, reintroduced after the flooding and evacuation of Kiwirrkurra in 2000, immediately following this he painted the land inundated of a mythic scale with the use of colour.

Tjungarrayi's art work is now also featured on the side of the "Purple House Truck".

In December 2017 Tjungurrayi had a heart attack at home and subsequently died in a hospital in Alice Springs.