artist – Walala Tjapaltjarri

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community – Central & Western Desert

title: Tingari

year painted: 2001

dimensions: 102 x 51cm
medium: Acrylic on linen
code: 1539

stretched: yes

This artwork can be viewed at our Sydney gallery.

View all artworks by Walala Tjapaltjarri.

about this painting:  Walala was one of the original ‘Pintupi Nine’.  The Pintupi Nine is a group of nine Indigenous people who lived a traditional hunter-gatherer desert-dwelling life in Australia’s Gibson Desert until 1984, when they made contact with relatives near Kiwirrkura.  They are considered to be last individuals living a fulling nomadic lifestyle.  In 1984 the made global news headlines.

Walala Tjapaltjarri uses a visually minimal painting style to represent aspects of the sacred Tingari Cycle; an epic journey of Tingari Ancestors during the Tjukurrpa (Creation Era). He paints aspects of the Tingari Cycle that are associated with the artist’s many sacred sites, such as Wilkinkarra, Maruwa, Tarrku, Njami and Yarrawangu. These are locations of significant rockholes, sandhills, sacred mountains and water soakages in the Gibson Desert.