Patrick Tjungurrayi’s paintings are enriched and informed by his role as a senior Law Man with active responsibility for ceremony and Country. His colourful abstract representations of significant sites, ceremony, and ancestral creation stories frequently feature his inherited Tingari dreaming stories.

Tjungarrayi’s Untitled (Ngaru) 2009 represents the soakage site of Ngaru, located near his birthplace south of Jupiter Well in Western Australia. Layered into the painting’s composition are ceremonial water designs, marks of Country found in creek beds, and sandhills. The markings that zigzag across the artwork represent both ceremonial body painting designs and the tracks of the Tingari men — ancestral beings who traversed the country, carving out the landscape, establishing tradition and ceremonial rites for their people and, in turn, safeguarding any secret and sacred knowledge.