Remembering Kumantjayi (Walala) Tjapaltjarri
Artists
Remembering Kumantjayi (Walala) Tjapaltjarri opens a window into Walala’s extraordinary artistic career, comprising 30 works spanning across 1999-2026 that include sculptures, works on paper, paintings, and collaborations. Belonging to the ‘Pintupi Nine,’ as dubbed by international news outlets, Walala and his family emerged in 1984 from their nomadic lifestyle in Gibson Desert, where they had made no contact with non-Aboriginal people, to join relatives in the Pintupi community of Kiwirrkurra near the WA/NT border.
From 1991, Dr George Tjapaltjarri took Walala under his wing and mentored him in his transition from a nomadic lifestyle to living in the 20th century. He soon began painting Tingari designs (relating to men’s ceremonial ground and body painting) in the recognisable Pintupi style of detailed dots and circles. However, with Dr George, Walala’s distinctive geometric Tingari designs blossomed in the 1990s working with Gallery Gondwana (Alice Springs), nurturing his free-spirited attitude and cheerful optimism as seen in Tingari Cycle (FW23443). Soon after he met Michael Eather, artist and director of FireWorks Gallery, and with several interstate visits across Australia, Walala was ushered into experimental artistic territory and a new era of abstraction and materiality.
Through a series of workshops in both Alice Springs and the FireWorks Gallery Campfire Group studio during 2001 and 2004, Walala experimented with pure linear compositions and no dotting. Drawing with ink on paper Walala’s Tingari designs would be transposed into significant sculptural forms (FW5134). This all took place in the company of artists such as Laurie Nilsen, Joanne Currie Nalingu, and Elton Cole, who drew on Indigenous cultural knowledge in their artistic practice while continually experimenting with contemporary processes and materials. Tingari Study VI (FW23290) demonstrates the first stage of Walala’s newfound artistic practice, where ink on paper is utilised to isolate the stark lines and composition of the Tingari style. The drawings would then be transposed into laser-cut steel and timber sculptures, imbuing the Tingari designs with steadfast physicality and dimension; bridging cultural memory with the contemporary.
Honouring Walala’s seminal works and extending on his commitment to experimentation, his sculptures were later recast in bronze and patina across 2021 and 2024 (FW22544). In a recent essay, Dr Marie Geissler proposes that “This collection possesses a powerful ambiguity. Their positive and negative spaces are as important as their physical mass…. The transformation is significant because it does not simply turn a painting into an object. It changes the fundamental experience of Walala’s visual language.”
In August 2026 Walala suffered a stroke and passed away In Alice Springs. In September, Walala and Michael’s collaborative work, We are Still Creating Ourselves II, was announced winner of the Sunshine Coast National Art Prize.
Michael Eather recently shared, “I feel so very privileged to have known and worked alongside (Walala) for so many years. Sharing a national art prize with him so soon after his passing feels like the earth just winked at us a little bit. Old mate always had a cheeky laugh and I’m sure he’s smiling now…We enjoyed many workshops together painting over maps and different textured backgrounds …he was always so excited to be trying some new colours and patterns, and keeping his ancient stories alive and vital in new frameworks. Our work together was always casual and spontaneous.
Tjapaltjarri will always be fondly remembered around Alice Springs as the smiling and cheerful artist who painted his distinctive Tingari patterns in a particular style that he completely owned. They were his origin stories and he never forgot them.
He collected many friends in the art world, both black and white, in Australian and overseas…he travelled several times to Brisbane and Sydney and also to France and Switzerland…he spoke only a little English but with his charming disposition and attractive paintings he communicated with all folks in that marvellous language of understanding.”
Remembering Kumantjayi (Walala) Tjapaltjarri provides audiences the opportunity to witness this very artistic transformation that has solidified Walala’s legacy on both a national and international stage.
Kumanjayi (Walala) Tjapaltjarri & Michael Eather We are still creating ourselves II 2026 acrylic & archival ink on canvas 99x150cm FW22984
