Tali at Talaalpi - Alice Nampitjinpa

In Tali at Talaalpi, Alice Nampitjinpa captures the shifting beauty and deep ancestral meaning of the sandhill country around Talaalpi, a significant site east of Kintore near the Western Australia–Northern Territory border. The title word tali refers to the sandhills that roll across the desert landscape—sacred formations shaped by the movements of ancestral beings during the Tjukurrpa (Dreaming). For Alice, Talaalpi is more than just a physical place: it is part of her inherited Country, passed down through generations and held in custodianship.

The painting’s rhythmic composition evokes the undulating terrain of the tali, using delicate dotting and contour lines to describe both surface and spirit. Through her mark-making, Alice invites the viewer into a terrain that holds memory, story, and responsibility. The site of Talaalpi is closely connected to women’s ceremonial knowledge, and through this work, Alice affirms her role as a cultural custodian, translating that knowledge into contemporary visual language. Tali at Talaalpi is not just a depiction of landscape, but a songline on canvas—a visual narrative that ties past to present, and land to life.