For information on the Papunya art movement see Acc. no. 1993.385 'Additional information'. Tim Tjapangati Payungka was born c.1942 just west of Central Lake Mackay. His family came eastward to the Haasts Bluff area in search of rations of flour and tea when he was a child. They later travelled back into Pintupi territory. He was contacted in 1962 whilst camped at Yarrana Rockhole due west of Kintore with his wife and child. Payungka was one of the first group of Pintupi to be brought into the newly established settlement of Papunya in the 1960s. Part of the original group of painters at Papunya in 1971, he moved to Kintore when it was established in 1981 and further west to Kiwirrkura, where he now lives, in the mid 1980s. He is a key figure for the important claypan site of Parrayingi, where in pre-contact times many people gathered in the large depressions formed by the claypan hollows for ceremonies after good rains. Another site for ceremonies was the Lake Hazlett area further to the north. Payungka's works are part of that body of work which represents the beginnings of the most significant Aboriginal art movement in this country. All of the Aboriginal artists involved with the Papunya Tula art movement have become significant practitioners and have established national and international reputations. Payungka is one of the few remaining Pintupi elders who began painting in Papunya with Geoffrey Bardon in the 1970s. His subjects or themes are Bush Tomato, Dancing Women, Dingo, Snake, Water and the Wilkinkarra Snake from this region. Information from Papunya Tula Artists Organisation stated that 'this painting depicts designs associated with the Snake Dreaming which travelled west and then north from Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay). This Dreaming travels through Mapamutu to Tirrikakau. Because of the secret nature of the ceremonies associated with this Dreaming, no further detail was given'. A key ritual figure since the late 1970s, Payungka was in the forefront of moves to establish the settlement at Kiwirrkura in Western Australia. Michael Eather from Fire-Works Gallery advised in 1997 that Payungka's work also refers to the Tingari Dreaming cycles which are universal to most Western Desert Aboriginal groups. They refer to a vast network of journey routes connecting sites of significance along which young initiates travel under the instruction of senior ceremonial men who teach song cycles and ritual procedures. Custodianships for different parts of the cycle are shared by different land owning groups. Prepared from: Johnson, Vivien. 'Aboriginal artists of the Western Desert: A biographical dictionary'. Craftsman House, East Roseville, NSW, 1994, pp.162-163. Information from telephone conversation with Michael Eather, Fire-Works Gallery on 5 May 1997. Correspondence received from Papunya Tula Artists 18 May 1997.