Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin

Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin is a senior Pitjantjatjara woman and acclaimed painter from Mimili on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. Born in 1952 near Bumbali Creek in the Northern Territory, she carries deep ancestral connections to her father’s Country at Docker River and her mother’s Country at Wintutjuru. Her authority is grounded in kinship, Country and lived cultural knowledge. 

For three decades Tuppy worked as a pre-school teacher at Mimili Anangu School, passing on 
language, inma (song and dance), and storytelling to generations of young Anangu. Her life’s work has been cultural transmission. Within Mimili and across the region she is recognised as a senior woman whose leadership is steady, respected and enduring. 

Since beginning to paint at Mimili Maku Arts in 2009, Tuppy has developed a powerful and 
distinctive visual language. Her paintings of Antara and surrounding ancestral landscapes are 
expansive and rhythmically charged, mapping Country through memory and inherited 
responsibility. In recent years her practice has deepened significantly. She is a painter grounded in Tjukurpa who is pushing her formal language with clarity and strength. 
This maturation has been recognised nationally. Tuppy won the Hadley’s Art Award in 2022, 
followed by the Muswellbrook Art Prize and the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize in 2023, and was a finalist in the Wynne Prize in 2023. She has twice been a finalist in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (2018 and 2022). These successive honours mark a period of significant national recognition. She is widely regarded as one of the most significant painters and cultural leaders working from the APY Lands today. Her work is held in major public and private collections in Australia and internationally. 

Tuppy paints as a custodian of story and place. Her cultural authority underpins the force of her canvases. Across the APY Lands and within institutions nationally, she is recognised as a leader whose contribution to Australian cultural life is profound, and still expanding. 

Awards 
2023 Winner, Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery 
2023 Finalist, Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales 
2023  Winner, Muswellbrook Art Prize, Muswellbrook Art Gallery 
2022 Winner, Hadley Prize, Hadley’s Orient Hotel 
2022 Finalist, NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory 
2021 Finalist, Arthur Guy Memorial Art Award, Bendigo Art Gallery 
2020 Finalist, John Leslie Art Prize, Gippsland Art Gallery 
2018 Finalist, NATSIAA, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory 

Selected Solo Exhibitions 
2026 Maku Inma, Olsen Gallery, Sydney 
2023 Antara, Olsen Gallery, Sydney 
2022 Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin, Olsen Gallery, Sydney 
2021 Antara, Olsen Gallery, Sydney 

Selected Group Exhibitions 
2026 Ngura Pulka, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 
2025 Tjunguringanyi – Come Together, Ames Yavuz, Sydney 
2024 Inma, Aboriginal Signature Estrangin Gallery Brussels, Belgium 
2023 Our Country: APY Lands, Gnyp Gallery, Berlin 
2022 malpa kutjara (two friends), Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne 
2020 kulata tjuta, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, France 
2020 kinara mimi, RAFT Art Space, Alice Springs 
2019 APY Lands LA, Olsen Gruin, Los Angeles 
2018  Antara, Harvey Art Projects, Idaho, USA 
2017 Tarnanthi, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 
2017 Artists of the APY Lands, Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne 
2015 Tjukurpa Kunpu - Strong Culture, Harvey Art Projects, Idaho, USA 
2015 APY Survey, RAFT Artspace, Alice Springs 
2012 Ngura Puti (Bush Home), Redot Gallery, Singapore  

Collections 
Art Gallery of South Australia 
ArtBank 
Corrigan Collection 
Fondation Opale 
James Selva - Nangam Collection 
Muswellbrook Shire Art Collection