DOB: c1923-2005, Burt Creek, Northern Territory
Language: Western Arrernte
Also known as: Wenton Rubuntja
Born: c.1923-2005, Burt Creek (Mpweringke), north of Alice Springs, Northern Territory
Language: Western Arrernte
Known as: Wenton Rubuntja, Wenten Pengarte Rubuntja
Wenten was a senior Arrernte law man, a husband and father, a cattleman and one of the most respected leaders Central Australia has known. As a young man he worked stations right across the region and was well known as a jockey at the Hermannsburg Races. He went on to become a driving force in the land rights movement. He was elected deputy chair of the Central Land Council in 1975, with Charles Perkins as chair, then served as chairman from 1976 to 1980 and again from 1985 to 1988. In 1976 he led more than a thousand Aboriginal people through the streets of Alice Springs calling for the Land Rights Act to be passed. In 1988 he and Galarrwuy Yunupingu presented Prime Minister Bob Hawke with the Barunga Statement, calling for a treaty. He spent years protecting sacred sites around Alice Springs, and that work helped bring about the Federal Court's 2000 decision recognising Arrernte native title over large areas of greater Alice Springs. It was the first time Aboriginal people had won title within a town. He helped found Tangentyere Council and Yipirinya School, sat on the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, and in 1995 was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for his service to Aboriginal people.
Albert Namatjira was his father's cousin, and Wenten called him uncle. In the 1950s, when stock work was quiet, Wenten would watch Albert at his easel for hours, taking in how he mixed his colours. Albert gave him a small board, and Wenten slipped away to practise on his own at the Telegraph Station. He was painting regularly by around 1960, and Flinders University Museum of Art holds what is believed to be his earliest watercolour, painted in the late 1950s. From the late 1970s he also painted in acrylic, drawing on the Western Desert art coming out of Papunya, and he kept working in both styles well into the 1990s.
His paintings were gifted to Pope John Paul II when he visited Alice Springs in 1986, to Queen Elizabeth II and to several Prime Ministers. Two of his works are held in the Royal Collection in the United Kingdom. His life story is told in his own words in The Town Grew Up Dancing: The Life and Art of Wenten Rubuntja (2002), written with Jenny Green.
CONNECTION TO COUNTRY
Like the other Hermannsburg watercolour artists, Wenten painted the land and everything she holds. His watercolours show the ranges, gorges, ghost gums, waterholes and wide plains around Alice Springs and the West MacDonnell Ranges, and every now and then a kangaroo or other animal appears in the scene, just as you would come across them out on Country. This was land he knew from a lifetime of living and working on it.
These are not just views. For Arrernte people the land holds the law, the stories and the family connections that go back generations, and Wenten spent much of his life fighting to protect it. He described his dot paintings as the law and his watercolours as the song of how the country looks, and he said that whatever kind of painting you do, it all comes back to the Dreaming. Every landscape he painted was a way of showing his connection to Country and sharing it with others.
EXHIBITIONS AND COLLECTIONS
Wenten was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1995. His work is held in major public collections in Australia and overseas, and his art is on permanent public display in Alice Springs and Canberra.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND PUBLIC WORKS
1988 Stained glass window based on his painting Arrernte Country, commissioned by Araluen Arts Centre and the Australian Bicentennial Authority, Alice Springs
1988 Barunga Statement, co-painted panel, hung in Parliament House, Canberra from 1991
1990 Atnengkerre Atherne Akwete (Two Laws Together), poster made with Chips Mackinolty for the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority
Stone artwork of the Mparntwe Dreaming, Reconciliation Place, Canberra
COLLECTIONS
Royal Collection, United Kingdom
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
Araluen Collection, Alice Springs
Flinders University Museum of Art, Adelaide
Queensland Museum, Brisbane
This painting was purchased directly from Wenten and a gallery certificate of authenticity will be provided with the sale.
