Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art

He painted for his life, and, in the latter years in particular, as with many of the original Papunya Tula artists, it was his life. His world became his art mapped out on canvas for all to see. Every critical stage of every epic tale that occurred in his country could be told through a language of lines and dots. (Paul Sweeney, 2011)

Born at Iltuturunga, south-west of Kaakurutintjinya (Lake Macdonald), Yala Yala grew up in this area. In 1962 he and his young family travelled to Papunya with Welfare Branch patrol officer Jeremy Long to receive medical treatment for a sick child and returned with a group of Pintupi in July of the following year.

In 1971 Yala Yala came knocking on the door of Geoffrey Bardon's flat in search of painting materials and became one of the founding shareholders of Papunya Tula Artists and an important artist. His powerful early works eschew figuration and often feature white dotting upon a red ochre or black background. An authority in ritual matters, he is also acknowledged for his Tingarri compositions on large canvases, characterised by serious incantations of dotted concentric circles and travelling paths, strong in country and law.

During the early 1980s he moved with his large family to Walungurru and eventually to Kiwirrkura. Yala Yala's work was included in Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia, which toured the USA in 1988–89, and after the exhibition one of his works was acquired by the Brooklyn Museum of Art.