Walala Tjapaltjarri and Michael Eather
We are still creating ourselves II | 2026 | acrylic on canvas | 99 x 150cm
Sunshine Coast National Art Prize 2026 - Finalist
Image courtesy of artists and FireWorks Gallery, Brisbane; Photograph by Mick Richards.
Walala Tjapaltjarri and Michael Eather
WA Pintupi
and QLD
We are still creating ourselves II
2026
Acrylic on canvas
99 x 150cm
Walala and his family (The Pintupi Nine) wandered out of the western desert into a remote community in 1984. That same year Michael made his way across Australia from Hobart, travelling through Alice Springs before arriving in Maningrida where he started his own family.
Both artists have worked independently since that time, but for over 25 years have also often collaborated. Michael’s paintings and sculptures feature symbolic narratives, including maps, stingrays and portals, while Walala paints graphic interpretations of the Tingari Cycle- ancestral men’s initiation stories and creation mythologies that drift across both physical and metaphysical places and spaces.
Together, their works form an interconnected cognitive landscape that explores the relationship between imagination and place, mapping contrast and continuity. Through repetition—pattern, line, and colour—the artists reveal shared yet distinctively different worldviews, forging connections across culture and geography.