Kumantje Jagamara (1946 – November 2020), also known as Kumantje Nelson Jagamara, Michael Minjina Nelson Tjakamarra, Michael Nelson Tjakamarra and variations (Kumantye, Jagamarra, Jakamara), was an Aboriginal Australian painter. He was one of the most significant proponents of the Western Desert art movement, an early style of contemporary Indigenous Australian art.
Early life and education
Kumantje Jagamara (the name preferred by his family) was born at Pikilyi, aka Vaughan Springs, Northern Territory (about west of Yuendumu), around 1946. His parents were both Walpiri and his father was an important "Medicine Man" in the Yuendumu community.
He lived a traditional lifestyle, and his grandfather taught him sand-, body-, and shield-painting.
He first saw white men at Mount Doreen Station, and remembers hiding in the bush in fear. Jagamara lived at Haasts Bluff for a time with the same family group as Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra. Later his parents took him to Yuendumu for European education at the mission school.
Career
He left school after initiation and spent some time working jobs such as pig shooting, driving trucks and droving cattle. He spent time in the Australian Army before coming back to Yuendumu and then moving to Papunya in 1976 (after the death of his father) to settle and marry Marjorie Napaltjarri. He worked in the government store and observed the work of many of the older artists at Papunya Tula for many years (including working under the instruction of his uncle Jack Tjurpurrula) before he began to paint regularly in 1983. He was invited to join Papynya Artists in that year, and became one if its most well-known members.
Jagamara painted Possum, Snake, Two Kangaroos, Flying Ant and Yam Dreamings for the area around Pikilyi.
In 1983, Jagamara was commissioned to create the forecourt mosaic at the new Parliament House in Canberra. The mosaic, Possum and Wallaby Dreaming, is based on his painting of the same name. The mosaic shows "a gathering of a large group of people from the kangaroo, wallaby and goanna ancestors [who] are meeting to talk and to enact ceremonial obligations. The work derives from the sand-painting tradition of the Warlpiri people, and has complex layers of meaning known only to Warlpiri elders". Three stonemasons took 18 months to two years to hand-cut the 90,000 granite setts which were used in the artwork.
In 1985 he painted "Five Stories 1984". In the mid-1980s, he engaged in cross-cultural collaboration, notably with artist Tim Johnson, and moved away from the usual Papunya style and colours.
In 1996, Jagamara established a long-term relationship with Brisbane art dealer Michael Eather, around the same time starting to work with Brisbane’s Campfire Group. He worked alongside Paddy Carroll Tjungurrayi in the second Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at QAGOMA.
In 2012, he was appointed by the NT Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority as one of a group of five people to determine which of the early Papunya boards held by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) should be selected for public display.
Work with Imants Tillers
In 1985, non-Indigenous artist Imants Tillers incorporated "Five Stories" in one of his own paintings, called "The Nine Shots", which ignited a debate about cultural appropriation and ethical issues surrounding the use of traditional Indigenous imagery by non-Indigenous artists. However, in 2001, the two men became friends, and collaborated over many years on a number of paintings (24 between 2001 and 2018).
One of these collaborations, "Metafisica Australe" (2017) is held by QAGOMA in Brisbane, in its Australian Art Collection. This work incorporates elements of "Five Stories", the story of the two artists' entanglement and journeys, and ethical issues relating to non-Indigenous artists using references to Indigenous art. The work consists of 36 canvas boards created Jagamara as the centre of another 36 surrounding boards.
Style
His painting style was initially meticulous dot-painting in the Papunya style, but he later simplified this, and by 2000 his work was described as "expressionistic and more "calligraphic" and flowing.
His work and his life, Jagamara "held true to his jukurrpa", which involved the Warlpiri interconnected cultural knowledge system and its law, with especial connection to place. Pikilyi is an important sacred site for ceremonies, at the junction of a number of different Dreamings, which are represented in his art work, including Possum, Snake, Two Kangaroos, Flying Ant and Yam.