FireWorks Gallery is honoured to present two significant exhibitions celebrating the legacies of Central Desert artists Remembering (Walala) Kumantjayi Tjapaltjarri and Michael Nelson Jagamara: Possum Stories.

Remembering (Walala) Kumantjayi Tjapaltjarri traces the evolution of Walala’s artistic career spanning 1996–2026, including sculptures, works on paper, paintings and collaborations. Belonging to the group dubbed the ‘Pintupi Nine’, Walala and his family emerged from a nomadic lifestyle in 1984 to join the Pintupi community of Kiwirrkurra. In 1991 he began painting Tingari forms (relating to men’s ceremony) in recognisable Pintupi designs but soon developed a distinctive style that would become increasingly experimental over the following decades.

In 1999, Walala met Brisbane artist and FireWorks Director Michael Eather. Workshops held in Alice Springs and at the FireWorks Campfire Group Studios in Brisbane in 2001 and 2004, alongside artists including Laurie Nilsen and Joanne Currie Nalingu, opened new possibilities for Walala’s practice. His Tingari designs moved beyond canvas into ink drawings, laser-cut steel and timber, and eventually bronze.

Works such as Tingari (classic first edition) (2001) and Tingari Study VI (2024) reveal an artist continually playing with abstraction, material and form. The exhibition provides an opportunity to follow this remarkable transformation and recognise the enduring legacy of an artist whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Upstairs, Michael Nelson Jagamara: Possum Stories explores one of the Warlpiri artist’s foundational narratives: the Possum Dreaming. Shakespearean in nature, this epic story is grounded in complex kinship structures, taboos and tribal lore, the story of the young Possum lovers and their punishment has been central to Jagamara’s artistic practice.

In 1987 Jagamara was commissioned by the Sydney Opera House Trust to create a 10-metre work for the Northern Foyer. A year later, his Forecourt Mosaic Meeting Place was unveiled at the opening of the new Parliament House in Canberra. Both works incorporated elements of the Possum story.

Possum Stories brings together key works painted between 2000 and 2019, including Possum Classic (2013), which returns to the vibrant ‘gelati’ colours of his earlier Opera House work, and Possum People (2019), one of his final paintings, completed with the assistance of family.

The exhibition also highlights Jagamara’s significant collaborations with Australian artist Imants Tillers. Five joint works, created between Brisbane, Papunya and Cooma using Tillers’ numbered canvas board system, feature Jagamara’s Possum imagery. Know Yourself (2021), completed posthumously by Tillers, brings together Jagamara’s central Possum motif with Tillers’ layered imagery and texts. Works from this collaboration are held in major collections including QAGOMA, Parliament House, Canberra and Tate Modern, London.

FireWorks Director Michael Eather, who worked closely with both artists over many decades, reflects:

It’s been a true privilege to work, travel and share studio time over the decades with these legendary men. Both were gentle and funny, talented and determined. Jagamara and Walala were open to learning, open to sharing. Together they retain so many supporters across broad sections of Indigenous communities and the art world, nationally and internationally.