Aileen Adamson: Piltati Wanampi – A Songline in Colour

47 × 45 cm

Piltati Wanampi: A Songline in Colour

A solo exhibition by Aileen Adamson In her bold new series Piltati Wanampi, 2025, Pitjantjatjara artist Aileen Adamson presents fourteen luminous paintings that sing the ancient Wanampi Tjukurpa (Rainbow Serpent Water Dreaming) of Piltati, a sacred site in the far north-west of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. Carrying forward one of the most celebrated songlines of the Western Desert, Aileen continues the artistic legacy of her grandfather, the late Tiger Palpatja (c.1920–2012), one of the APY Lands’ foundational painters and a senior custodian of these same Wanampi stories. Alongside her mother Kukika Adamson, her sister Andrea Adamson, and her aunt Rini Tiger, Aileen belongs to a remarkable multi-generational family of artists who have each brought the shimmering presence of the water serpents into contemporary painting. Through fearless colour, rhythmic mark-making and a mesmerising sense of movement, Aileen translates the eternal Tjukurpa into a vivid visual language. Her Wanampi glide beneath the red earth, coil through rockholes and rise with the storm clouds, embodying both the life-giving force of rain and the ancestral law that has sustained Anangu for millennia. The Tjukurpa of Piltati Two lazy snake brothers lived at Piltati with their industrious sister-wives, who hunted every day for kuka (meat). Tired of feeding their idle husbands, the women one day ate all the food themselves. Enraged, the brothers transformed into enormous Wanampi, the ancestral rainbow serpents. They teased the women with false tracks, leading them on a furious chase across the country. Digging deep as they pursued the serpents, the sisters carved a 25-kilometre watercourse, gorge and rocky valley—the living landscape of Piltati we see today. In the dramatic climax, the elder sister speared the larger Wanampi, only to be swallowed whole in retribution, while the younger serpent devoured his wife. Their immense bodies remain in the land, guarding the precious water and teaching the consequences of greed and disrespect. With Piltati Wanampi, 2025, Aileen Adamson asserts herself as a powerful new voice within one of the desert’s most significant artistic dynasties, offering viewers a rare and radiant portal into the living heart of Anangu Tjukurpa.

Aileen Adamson APY Lands