13 November - 17 January 2026
TIGER PALPATJA | New York
Need to get details about exhibition custom fields via API.
D’Lan Contemporary New York is honored to present a solo exhibition of paintings by renowned Australian First Nations artist, Tiger Palpatja (c. 1920 – 2012) from the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY Lands) in South Australia.
Born into a traditional, nomadic life around 1920 near Nyapari, Palpatja later worked as a shearer and fencer on the Ernabella mission. He was also a highly respected senior Law man and a ngangkaṟi (traditional healer) within his community, embodying deep spiritual and cultural knowledge.
Palpatja began painting late in life, at Tjala Arts in Amata in 2004 when he was approximately 84 years old. Though his artistic career was brief, his extraordinary talent and his work, characterised by a vibrant, distinctive colour palette and depictions of the Piltati Tjukurpa, quickly garnered critical acclaim. He was a finalist in the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award numerous times (2005, 2006, 2010, 2011) and the Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards in 2009 and 2011.
Palpatja’s legacy endures through his powerful paintings, which are held in major public collections such as the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria.
Installation Views
Tiger Palpatja
Tiger Palpatja emerged as a major figure of the APY Lands despite beginning his painting career in his mid-80s. Born at Piltati, a deeply significant rockhole in the Mann Ranges, he carried an encyclopaedic knowledge of Wanampi Tjukurpa, the Water Serpent narrative that underpins his practice. Palpatja’s canvases are distinguished by sweeping movements of colour and densely worked surfaces, where incandescent pinks, reds, lilacs and ochres pulse around the snaking forms of ancestral beings. His visual language reflects both an intimate custodianship of Country and the dramatic geological forces expressed in its creation stories.
Before turning to painting, Palpatja lived a richly varied life: he was a skilled shearer, respected ngangkari (traditional healer), ceremonial leader, and maker of tools. His late embrace of acrylic painting coincided with the growth of Tjala Arts and later Tjungu Palya, where his style expanded with remarkable freedom. Now recognised as a leading artist of the Southern Desert, his work is held in major national and state collections and continues to shape contemporary understandings of Pitjantjatjara cultural expression.
There is no provenenace field for artists in AG, shoudl we add a custom field for this? Has it been scoped out sufficeiently
Need to define the interactive map functionality, we can add lat/long values as custom fields TBD.
