Megan Lyons / Wanampi Tjukurpa (Piltati) (20003)

Megan Lyons is a Pitjantjatjara artist born in 1990 in Amata, in the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands of far north-west South Australia. She grew up in Amata surrounded by a strong family tradition of art, culture and Tjukurpa before relocating to Adelaide in 2012, where she is now raising her young family.

Megan comes from an important artistic lineage. Her grandfather was the celebrated Pitjantjatjara artist and ngangkari (traditional healer) Tiger Palpatja, one of the significant senior painters to emerge from the APY Lands. Tiger was closely associated with the Wanampi Tjukurpa of Piltati, the Country of his birth, and his distinctive, vividly coloured paintings of this story are represented in major Australian public collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria.

Megan’s father, Sammy Lyons, was also a respected senior man and artist who painted at Amata. Her aunty Kukika Adamson is an established artist who continues to paint the Piltati story, and Megan has also worked collaboratively with her.

Although Megan grew up within this remarkable artistic family, she began her own painting practice relatively recently, commencing in Adelaide in 2023. Her paintings continue important Tjukurpa passed through her family while developing a distinctive contemporary visual language of vibrant colour, flowing line, repeated forms and intricate fields of mark-making.

One of Megan’s principal subjects is Wanampi Tjukurpa, associated with Piltati and inherited through her grandfather Tiger Palpatja. She also paints Ngintaka Tjukurpa, a story connected to Angatja and her father’s mother’s side of the family.

In only a few years of painting, Megan has begun attracting broader attention as part of a new generation of APY artists. Her work has been exhibited in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, including at Sydney Contemporary and as part of the 2025 Tarnanthi Festival. In 2026 her work was included in New Ground at Martin Browne Contemporary in Sydney, an exhibition highlighting emerging APY artists.

Selected Exhibitions

• 2026 – New Ground, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney
• 2025 – Generation Next, Tarnanthi Festival, APY Art Centre Collective, Adelaide
• 2025 – Tjunguringanyi – Coming Together, Tarnanthi Festival, Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Adelaide
• 2025 – MOTHER, DRAW Space, Sydney
• 2024 – Sydney Contemporary, APY Gallery, Sydney
• 2024 – Generation Flex, APY Gallery
• 2024 – Walka Tjuta Walytjarara Walytjarara – Family Colours, APY Gallery, Adelaide2023 – Piltati, APY Gallery, Melbourne

In this painting, Megan Lyons depicts Wanampi Tjukurpa, an important ancestral story associated with Piltati, an important waterhole and rockhole site west of Amata in the APY Lands.

The story was passed to Megan through her grandfather, the late Tiger Palpatja, who was born at Piltati and became one of the senior custodians and great painters of this Tjukurpa.

The story tells of wati kutjara and minyma kutjara, two brothers and two sisters who lived together as married couples. Each day the women went out hunting while the men remained behind performing ceremony, singing and dancing. During these ceremonies the men could transform themselves into different animals.

Eventually the older brother suggested that they transform themselves into Wanampi, powerful ancestral water serpents. Rather than travelling into the sky, the brothers went beneath the ground, creating a great creek as they travelled towards the waterhole at Piltati, where they remained.

When the women returned they could not find their husbands. Thirsty, they followed the newly formed creek towards Piltati, digging into the earth in search of water. One of the women noticed what appeared to be the tracks of a snake and believed they might be able to catch it for food.

As the younger sister continued digging, her wana, or digging stick, struck one of the Wanampi. The serpents emerged and pursued the women. The sisters threw down their wana and piti, or wooden bowls, and ran, but the Wanampi eventually caught and swallowed them.

For Megan, however, Piltati is much more than the setting for an ancestral story. It is intimately connected with her own family history.

Megan has explained that her great-grandmother was travelling through Country when she went into labour. Her family took her to a cave at Piltati, where she gave birth to Megan’s grandfather, Tiger Palpatja. Through his birth at this place, Piltati and its Tjukurpa became deeply connected with Megan’s family and identity.

Today Megan continues the story painted so powerfully by her grandfather and by other members of her family. In her interpretation, sweeping bands of colour travel through the canvas between layered circular forms and densely worked fields of pattern. The composition has an extraordinary sense of movement, evoking the journeys of the Wanampi through and beneath Country and the enduring presence of the Piltati Tjukurpa.