Thomas & Walala Tjapaltjarri.

Thomas and Walala Tjapaltjarri are brothers and among the most significant living painters of the Western Desert. Of the Pintupi people, they were born in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia into a family whose story is unlike any other in Australian art. In late 1984 the brothers and their family group walked out of the desert and made first contact with settled Australia, becoming known around the world as the Pintupi Nine, the last people to leave a traditional nomadic life on their ancestral country.

Both brothers came to painting through Papunya Tula, the artist company at the heart of the Western Desert movement, and both take the Tingari as their subject. The Tingari cycle is a body of sacred Dreaming narratives that trace the journeys of ancestral beings across Pintupi country, carrying the law, song, and knowledge handed down through generations. Rendered in spare, commanding geometry, their canvases hold that country and its stories in visual form.

Walala is celebrated for his bold, stripped-back Tingari compositions of interlocking rectangles and lines; Thomas works the same ancestral cycle in his own hand and rhythm. Their paintings are held in significant public and private collections in Australia and abroad, and the brothers are recognised as custodians of one of the world's oldest continuous artistic traditions.