Spinifex Arts Projects in remote Tjuntjuntjara has shared the sad news that the fine artist Kunmanara Presley has died. Here’s director Brian Hallett’s obituary:
Kunmanara (Patju) Presley was born in the 1940s at Itaratjara, an important sacred site deep within the Great Victoria Desert. His early life was lived in the traditional manner, walking the ancient Tjukurpa tracks that also link sacred sites, food and water sources via the ancestral narratives of his Pila Nguru people.
His life spanned a period of immense change and upheaval. As a young boy, his family was displaced from their traditional homelands due to British atomic testing conducted nearby at Maralinga. This forced journey led him as a naked young boy hundreds of kilometres north to the mission at Warburton then much further east to Ernabella, an experience that gave him written literacy in his language, Pitjantjatjara, and a deep knowledge of the two worlds he inhabited—the Christian gospel (he even became a community pastor) and the profound, enduring Law of the Tjukurpa (everywhen).
Throughout his life, he remained a powerful cultural figure, practising traditional ceremonies (inma), carving ceremonial objects (punu), and maintaining his role as a senior Law man for the Spinifex people.
Unlike some of his contemporaries such as Fred and Ned Grant, Lawrence Pennington, the Rictor Brothers and Simon Hogan who focused on bold but traditional iconography, Presley developed a style defined by mesmerising fields and veils of rhythmic dots. These fields of colour and light suggest atmosphere and spiritual confidence, hovering across the canvas like mist or dust over the desert floor.
His paintings are imbued with a philosophical tension between the abstract and the sacred. They function as both maps of his Country and embodiments of the Creation Law, creating works of elegant abstraction that resonate with a global audience while remaining deeply and truly anchored in his ancestral places.
As one curator noted, viewing his work felt like a “magic trick,” where delicate undulations of colour shimmered and slid, pushing the picture plane and evoking a sense of the sublime.
Kluge-Ruhe curator Henry Skerritt amplifies: “While this certainly indicates Patju’s individuality as an artist, it is worth considering the particular nature of this difference. Like many of his peers, Patju was displaced from his desert homelands in the middle decades of the twentieth century by Government Welfare Patrols tasked with relocating desert peoples to missions and government settlements. It was in the context of upheaval and displacement that the Desert painting movement was born. It was the differing histories of people and place that created the diversity of this movement. Unlike the Rictors and the Andersons and other well-known families of the Pila Nguru, who were moved to Cundeelee Mission in WA, Patju and his family were picked up further north, and taken to Warburton Mission. Not long after, Patju walked the 8OO kilometers to Pukatja (Ernabella Mission) to be with family members.
“If one was to draw a triangle linking Warburton, Pukatja and Tjuntjuntjara (where Patju latterly lived and worked after a period at Irrunytju) it would create an area approximately the size of Victoria. This shows the range of area that Patju covered in his youth, accounting for the vast bank of places and narratives that he has access to in his painterly repertoire”.
Kunmanara Presley leaves behind an indelible mark on Australian art. His paintings – many traversing the Kalaya Tjukurpa (the Emu Dreaming) are held in all major Australian institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) and the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), ensuring his wisdom and vision will endure.
In Tjuntjuntjara we will remember him not just as a great artist, but as a cultural custodian who faced immense historical challenges and responded with grace, authority, and an unparalleled artistic vision. We mourn his passing, but celebrate the fact that through his paintings, his intimate, spiritual knowledge of the Land and the Tjukurpa is protected and passed on for all time.
He lead a colourful life – seen in his bright shirts, his gregarious conversation, his creative driving. You see it in his paintings. They glow as if illuminated. So did Patju. He carried an innate optimism that says, with the right combinations in place, he could ‘have it all’.
Expect tribute exhibitions for Kunmanara Presley next year at Aboriginal & Pacific Art in Sydney and ReDot Gallery in Singapore. In the meantime, read all about Presley and the Spinifex Arts Project in Sun & Shadow from Upswell Books.
