ESSENCE AND PRESENCE

September 4, 2026 – September 26, 2026

Open: Friday & Saturday from 2- 6p.m.

Dr George Tjapaltjarri (1938–2017) and Linda Syddick Napaltjarri (1937–2021)
Both highly significant First Nations artists within Australian art history.

The work of Dr George and Linda Syddick conveys a strong sense of presence.
Their paintings do not describe; they transmit. What is seen is inseparable from what is felt. To engage with their work is to look beyond the surface, to attend to perception, memory, and an understanding that human beings are not separate from the world they inhabit. Dr George Tjapaltjarri and Linda Syddick Napaltjarri share deep cultural foundations. Both are Western Desert people of the Pintupi language group and belong to the same classificatory kinship system: Tjapaltjarri (male) and Napaltjarri (female), complementary skin names within an eight-part structure.
Though not related by blood, they are considered brother and sister under Western
Desert law, sharing Dreaming stories and custodial responsibility for Country.
They were born only a few years apart in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia and
spent their early lives in a traditional nomadic hunter-gatherer society, shaped by
ancestral law, ritual knowledge, and an intimate relationship with land.

Dr George Tjapaltjarri was recognised at birth as a Ngankari—a traditional healer and law man. His upbringing was directed towards this role, and he later referred to himself, with characteristic clarity, as a Witchdoctor. His authority was embodied, learned, and lived. Dr George’s life stands as a rare convergence of artistic innovation, ceremonial authority and spiritual responsibility.

Linda Syddick Napaltjarri’s early life was marked by rupture. In the mid-1940s, the
Pintupi were forcibly removed from their homelands. Atomic testing was planned in what Europeans considered an “empty” landscape, and pastoral interests sought control of permanent water sources. This violent dislocation initiated a period of enforced settlement and assimilation in Central Australia.

From this point, the lives of George and Linda diverged.
Linda’s family eventually settled at Haasts Bluff, a Lutheran mission that profoundly shaped her spiritual outlook. Her painting practice—intensely original and unmistakably contemporary—seeks to reconcile Christian belief with the Aboriginal cosmology of the Dreaming, where past, present, and future exist in a continuous, living cycle. Her work addresses universal themes of faith, displacement, belonging, and morality, while remaining grounded in personal and cultural truth.

Dr. George transmits tradition, unfamiliar to the Westerner.
His paintings are not only expressions of country and law, but enduring testaments to a man who carried—and passed on—profound cultural knowledge from the desert into the contemporary world.
His works are transmissions of energy—pared back, immediate, and resolute.
Silence and space are as powerful as mark-making.
His paintings map land and body simultaneously, evoking both vast terrain and the close, intimate language of ochre on skin.

While Linda expresses a fearless expansion of form, narrative and subject matter, which re-shaped visual language describing a rapidly changing world.
In many ways, Linda could be understood as one of the first modernist Aboriginal artists, who absorbed tradition while introducing motifs and symbols of the contemporary life.

This exhibition coincides with the release of The Witchdoctor and the Windmill,
a documentary on the life and art of Linda Syddick by Robert & John Hamilton and
edited by Sara Bodinar: How a traditional Australian Aboriginal hunter-gatherer became an award-winning modernist artist. ‘Remember the Future’ An awareness of the transition of Aboriginal art from a local practice of painting on boards to art holding prominence in the collections of the world’s cultural capitals.
The documentary has won 5 awards at the World Film Festival Cannes 2026 land will be presented at many more film festivals worldwide.

Dr George (Nyunmul) Ward Tjapaltjarri (circa 1938-2017)

Born in the Gibson Desert, south-west of Puntujarrpa (Jupiter Well), his traditional
country encompassed Karrinyarra west of Kintore and Kilinya in Winanpa territory.
Dr George was recognised at birth as a Ngankari—a traditional healer and law man.
His upbringing was directed towards this role, and he later referred to himself, with characteristic clarity, as a witchdoctor.
Before sustained contact, he travelled widely through this vast desert landscape, as far east as the Pollock Hills, acquiring deep ceremonial and ecological knowledge that would later inform both his healing practice and his art.

A founding member of the Papunya painting movement, Dr George was also revered as
a ngangkari—a powerful healer or “clever man”—whose cultural authority extended far
beyond the canvas. His healing abilities were widely acknowledged, and he also worked extensively with the Tjukurla Medical Clinic and Central Australian Aboriginal health services.

Dr George emerged from the desert in April 1964 with a small group of Pintupi people
living near Puntujarrpa, at a time when he was already well into adulthood.
Anthropologist Jeremy Long recalled him as “charismatic, energetic and
outward-looking—keen to understand the changing world while remaining firmly
grounded in traditional law. This rare combination of cultural authority and adaptability shaped his life’s work”.

One of the original group of artists associated with Papunya Tula Artists, Dr George first painted in Papunya in 1971, producing several small works before painting intermittently through the 1970s. He returned to painting with renewed focus in the late 1980s, working initially again with Papunya Tula and later independently with Gallery Gondwana.
During this later period, his work gained widespread recognition for its bold,
monumental compositions—ceremonial designs scaled up into powerful abstract
statements that placed him firmly within international contemporary art discourse.
Dr George Ward Tjapaltjarri’s life stands as a rare convergence of artistic innovation, ceremonial authority and spiritual responsibility. His paintings are not only expressions of country and law, but enduring testaments to a man who carried—and passed on—profound cultural knowledge from the desert into the contemporary world.

His paintings are held in major public collections including the National Gallery of
Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria, as well as in international collections in the Netherlands and the United States

Linda Syddick (Tjangkaya) Napaltjarri (1937-2021)

Born around Lake Mackay in the Gibson Desert, near the border of Western Australia
and the Northern Territory, as a child, Linda lived a traditional nomadic life, walking across Pintupi homelands and developing an intimate, embodied knowledge of Country. Linda Syddick Napaltjarri’s early life was marked by rupture. In the mid-1940s, the Pintupi were forcibly removed from their homelands.
Like many desert families, her family journeyed east, making first contact with missions and government ration stations far from their ancestral lands.
One formative event from this journey became the subject of one of Linda’s most
recognised works, The Witchdoctor and the Windmill.
The painting recalls the moment when a travelling ngangkari (medicine man),
encountering a windmill for the first time, mistook it for a malevolent spirit and
attempted to overpower it with song and spears.
This episode encapsulates the profound cultural encounter between two knowledge
systems that would resonate throughout Linda’s practice.

Linda first learned to paint by assisting her stepfather Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, a senior Pintupi law man, custodian of powerful Dreamings, and a respected figure able to communicate with the spirit world. In later years, he entrusted her with the right to continue his legacy, granting her authority to paint Tingari creation stories—subjects traditionally reserved for men.
Her artistic education came not from formal training, but through close observation of Country, ceremony, and lived experience.
While her early works are grounded in classical Pintupi iconography of great cultural depth and beauty, Linda later positioned herself at the forefront of contemporary Aboriginal art by engaging with global and universal themes.
Her paintings confront modern realities—money, alcohol, displacement—while
remaining anchored in cultural law. Secure in her role as a senior Pintupi woman,
Linda’s strength lay in her ability to bridge two worlds.
For Linda, the Dreaming is a living continuum in which all things—ancestral, spiritual, and contemporary—are interconnected. This worldview underpins her remarkable E.T. series, inspired by the film she watched more than twenty times. E.T.’s longing for home resonated deeply with Linda; to her, the character embodied a spirit being temporarily on earth, destined to return home, as ancestral beings do. Innovative and deeply distinctive, Linda Syddick Napaltjarri’s paintings stand as a compelling example of religious and cultural syncretism. By fusing Christian narratives with Aboriginal cosmology, her work reveals profound connections between biblical stories and the Dreaming—where past, present, and future exist in a dynamic spiritual continuum. A powerful talent to emerge from the women’s art movement of the mid-1980s, Linda is recognised as the first modernist Aboriginal artist. Linda’s work is held in public and private collections throughout Australia, Europe, and the United States. Her legacy is that of a truly contemporary artist—one who transcended ethnographic categorisation to articulate a bold, original vision of spiritual, cultural, and modern life.
More recently, Robert Hamilton, whose research specialised in the history of the late colonial Australian frontier, Austral–Asian history, education, First Nations art, representation in film and art and reconciliation, has completed a long-form
documentary biopic on Linda Syddick, The Witchdoctor and the Windmill.

The documentary has won 5 awards at the World Film Festival Cannes 2026 and will be presented at many more film festivals worldwide.