Walking In: Kiwirrkurra, October 1984
In October 1984, a family of nine Pintupi people walked out of the desert west of Lake Mackay (Wilkinkarra) and into the community of Kiwirrkurra in Western Australia. They had lived their whole lives on their own country, with no contact with the outside world. The story made headlines around the world, and the family became known as the Pintupi Nine. Six of them went on to become artists with Papunya Tula Artists, and some are now among the most collected painters of the Western Desert.
The Pintupi Nine in 1984
Life in the Desert
The group was two women and seven young people, brothers, sisters and cousins: Warlimpirrnga, Walala, Thomas (Tamlik) and Piyiti, and Yalti, Yukultji and Takariya. Warlimpirrnga, the eldest, was about 26 and already married to his cousin Yalti. They lived around Marruwa and the country west of Lake Mackay, moving between waterholes, hunting and gathering as Pintupi people had for thousands of years.
Why They Were Still There
From the late 1950s, most Pintupi people moved, or were moved, east off their country into government settlements such as Papunya and Haasts Bluff. In the 1960s, Native Patrol Officers also cleared desert people from areas under the flight path of Blue Streak rockets fired from Woomera, which began in 1964. When relatives travelling in to Papunya met patrol officer Jeremy Long, they told him about this family, who had chosen to stay on their country. They remained there for another two decades.
First Contact
In October 1984, Warlimpirrnga and Piyiti came across a clothed Pintupi man, Pinta Pinta, at a borehole near Kiwirrkurra. Startled, they fled. Pinta Pinta recognised who they might be, and a group of Pintupi men from Kiwirrkurra went out to find the family, who turned out to be close relatives. The family agreed to come in, and in late October 1984 they walked into Kiwirrkurra, one of the most remote communities in Australia.
Becoming Artists
At Kiwirrkurra the family lived among Pintupi painters working with Papunya Tula Artists, the company founded at Papunya in 1972. Warlimpirrnga asked to paint and finished his first painting for Papunya Tula in April 1987. Thomas and Walala followed later that year, and the three became known internationally as the Tjapaltjarri Brothers. In 1996 Yalti and Yukultji began painting with a group of women at the art centre, and Takariya also became a painter.
Their paintings show the Tingari and other ancestral stories of their country around Lake Mackay. They are best known for dot paintings built from tight parallel lines of dots in a restrained palette, which create a shimmering, optical effect. The New York Times compared Warlimpirrnga's work to the Op Art of Bridget Riley.
Recognition
In 2012 Warlimpirrnga was one of a small group of Australian artists included in dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany, one of the world's most important contemporary art exhibitions, and in 2015 he had his first solo exhibition in New York, Maparntjarra, at Salon 94. In 2018 Yukultji Napangati won the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Their work is held in major public and private collections in Australia and overseas. Thomas died in 2024 and Walala in 2026, and the family's paintings continue through Papunya Tula Artists.
References and Further Reading
- Johnson, Vivien. Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists. IAD Press, 2008.
- Myers, Fred R. Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place, and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986.
- Myers, Fred R. Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art. Duke University Press, 2002.
- Davenport, Sue, Peter Johnson and Yuwali. Cleared Out: First Contact in the Western Desert. Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005.
- Perkins, Hetti, and Hannah Fink (eds). Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius. Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2000.
