Lirrwati to Wilkinkarra: A Nanala Family Exhibition

Ningie Nanala and her children — Vincent, Winifred, and Dulcie Nanala

In collaboration with Warlayirti Artists.

Lirrwati to Wilkinkarra is a landmark family exhibition, bringing together the artistic legacy of matriarch Ningie Nanala and her children— Vincent, Winifred, and Dulcie Nanala. Together, they honour the stories and Country of their father, the late and celebrated Balgo master, Tjumpo Tjapanangka (Murtikarlka).

Wilkinkarra is a place of profound significance for the Pintupi and Kukatja peoples, a place where ancestral stories ripple across saltpans, sandhills, and claypans. In the last century, with the arrival of Kartiya (whitefella) and their cattle, the old man — Murtikarlka (Tjumpo Tjapanangka) — made the hard decision to lead his people north, away from Wilkinkarra, to the Balgo Hills Mission. But Country was never forgotten. Stories evolved, travelled, and took new shape in the brilliance of Balgo painting, where towering dunes and shimmering lakes transformed into kaleidoscopic fields of dot and colour.

This exhibition carries deep significance: it presents some of the last works painted by Ningie, now frail and no longer able to paint. A pioneering Balgo artist, Ningie’s dramatic, thickly applied ‘rivers’ of paint have been treasured for decades. In her final years, her loose, wild brushwork captured a raw and intimate knowledge of Country — a lifetime’s worth of memory and connection laid onto canvas.

Now her children carry that mantle. Each brings their own voice, their own relationship to the lands south of Balgo. Vincent carries the precise, optical Pintupi style passed down from his father Tjumpo and half-brother, renowned Papunya Tula artist Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri.

Dulcie’s works glow with the desert hues of her parents’ country — saltpans, claypans, and bushfoods reimagined through contemporary stylisation. And Winifred, who speaks strongly of following in her parents’ footsteps, merges her mother’s dense dotting with her father’s strong form, holding both lineages with pride.

In August 2022, supported by Warlayirti Artists, the Nanala family journeyed south from Balgo to reconnect with their homelands — travelling from Ningie’s birthplace at Lirrwati to Wilkinkarra and the surrounding Country, including Ngukarnupalkarr, where Tjumpo once dug a well so his family could return long into the future. For many, it was their first time returning to these places, long known only through story and dream. As Winifred says, “Now it’s my turn to tell story.”

Wilkinkarra was never truly abandoned. Even as the old men walked away, their footsteps remained, transforming song into canvas, into the shimmering colour fields now celebrated as Balgo Art. In Lirrwati to Wilkinkarra, the next generation reclaims those tracks, not only remembering but renewing. This is an exhibition of pride and longing - for Country, for family, for the enduring ties that bind people to land.

Written by Poppy Lever, Manager at Warlayirti Artists together with the Nanala family 2025