Barney Campbell TJAKAMARRA was born in the Central Desert region, near Lake MacDonald (Kaakuratintja). He was a highly respected Law Man of the Pintupi language group and taught at the Kintore school. His favorite subject, inherited from his father, depicts motifs associated with the Dreaming of Kattaru and Naaru sacred sites connected to his ancestral land.

In the Dreamtime, the mythic era of the world’s creation, the Tingari ancestors traveled across the Australian desert accompanied by their wives and apprentices. At each stage of their journey, they created sacred sites, established religious ceremonies, and recounted the stories of the places they passed through by means of song, dance, and painting. These journeys, said to have formed the desert’s sand dunes, directly inspired Barney Campbell’s work. When he painted this canvas—one of his final creations—the artist chose not to reveal its subject, as it was too sacred to be shared with the uninitiated. Nonetheless, through this work, titled Tingari Cycle, Barney Campbell celebrates the splendor of his sacred homeland.

Derived from the transposition onto canvas of motifs originally drawn on the ground, Aboriginal paintings make particular use of dot painting, a technique characteristic of the desert’s so-called “satellite” canvases. The concentric forms made up of lines of dots represent ceremonial sites or parcels of land where legendary events took place. The labyrinthine effect also symbolizes the features of the desert which, far from being an empty expanse, is composed of rocky hills, sand dunes, swamps, and dried riverbeds—spatial markers that help Aboriginal people navigate their land. The choice of colors evokes the density of the landscape, while the contrasts enhance the vibratory and mystical power of the subject.