Ronnie Allen Tili (Light)

Ronnie Allen is a self-taught artist and a respected Elder in Kaltukatjara/Docker River, Northern Territory. His family’s Country is Kunapula, just south of Kaltukatjara. He has spent much of his life travelling the Western Desert as a Christian Pentecostal pastor.

Allen’s work represents gatherings for important Aṉangu religious and ceremonial occasions, and maps the people’s travel across Country. Here, they are shown running, dancing, hunting, swimming, fighting and gathering at waterholes as they travel through Allen’s ancestral Pitjantjatjara homelands. The men and women take different routes as they move from the ranges south of Kaltukatjara, north-west past Tjukurla and Kintore, towards what is known today as Lake Macdonald in Western Australia.

Tjarlirli and Kaltukatjara Art, 2023