Poyarri 1988

Sunfly Tjampitjin was a respected senior custodian for the Kukatja people. During his lifetime, he assisted anthropologists document Kukatja culture. His country encompassed Mankay and Lake Mackay, some 250 kilometres south of Wirrimanu (Balgo) in Western Australia.

Poyarri 1988 is a major painting from the early stage of the artist's short career. The country, Poyarri, is named after the important tjurrnu (soakwater) in the area, which Tjampitjin has depicted as circles. This area is in sandhill country at the top of the Great Sandy Desert, also in Western Australia, and represents an important site - a place of water in a harsh environment. These soaks are represented by roundels, with interconnected lines signifying paths that ancestral beings travelled as part of creation stories.

The confidence with which Sunfly Tjampitjin depicted this site is astonishing and attests to his great cultural knowledge. The many rows of fine parallel lines, framed by dots linking each site, suggest movement between related desert sites. In this painting, the route of the pathways is dramatised by the use of white dots, which appear to vibrate and oscillate on the surface of the canvas.