Design and Art Australia Online

Born c. 1940 about just east of Haasts Bluff. Turkey’s family had been moving between traditional country around Kintore and Hermannsburg mission, where they could collect rations of flour, tea and sugar. After Turkey’s birth they remained in the area around Haasts Bluff. When Papunya was being established and there was work to be had the family 'came in’ from the bush and Turkey, recently initiated, was employed as a labourer on construction work around the new settlement and also in the Papunya communal kitchen. Later he married and moved to an outstation west of Papunya. His first wife died, and he remarried and later moved to Kintore in 1983. He had an outstation on his traditional lands at Yuwalki to the south-east of Kintore. Chairman of Papunya Tula Artists for much of the 1990s and one of the best known of the company’s artists, Turkey Tolson was one of the pioneer painters at Papunya in the early 1970s. While some of his 1980s work was amongst the most innovative and figurative of all the Papunya Tula artists’, he also painted in the classical severely traditional Pintupi style of circles and connecting lines. Artist-in- Residence Flinders University 1979 with David Corby Tjapaltjarri . Painted Bush Fire, Emu, Snake, Woman, and Mitakutjirra Dreamings from his traditional country south of Kintore around Yuwalki, Mitakutjirra and Putjya rockhole. The artist and his work featured in East/West: Land in Papunya Paintings at Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Institute in Adelaide 1990 and in the associated documentary Market of Dreams . Turkey’s daughter-in-law Brenda Rowe began painting in 1989.

Writers:

Johnson, Vivien Note: primary biographer

Date written:

1994

Last updated:

2011