Tarisse King / Pink Salts (TK181)

Tarisse King was born in Adelaide, South Australia, on 4 September 1986. She is a proud Gurindji/Waanyi First Nations woman, with family connections to Mudburra/Jingili and Garrwa people. Tarisse is the older sister of fellow artist Sarrita King and the daughter of the late, highly regarded artist William King Jungala (1966–2007).

Art, family and storytelling have been central to Tarisse’s life and creative practice. She spent much of her childhood in Darwin in the Northern Territory, where the dramatic landscape and extreme seasonal changes made a lasting impression. Torrential Wet Season rains, cyclones, intense Dry Season heat and the vast expanses of the inland landscape would later become important influences within her work.

The history of the Gurindji people also forms an important cultural backdrop to Tarisse’s story. In 1966, Gurindji workers and their families, led by Vincent Lingiari, walked off Wave Hill Station in protest against poor wages and conditions. Their campaign developed into a nine-year struggle for the return of their land and became a defining moment in Australia’s land rights movement. In 1975, part of the Gurindji homelands was formally returned, and the campaign helped pave the way for the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.

Throughout her youth, Tarisse regularly travelled the long journey between Darwin and Adelaide, passing through Katherine and directly through the heart of Australia. These journeys exposed her to constantly changing landscapes, from the tropical north through vast inland regions, salt lakes, river systems and desert Country. The scale and isolation of these travels helped shape the distinctive aerial and topographical perspective that remains central to her work.

At the age of 16, Tarisse moved to Adelaide, where her father was living, and began working alongside him. William became both teacher and mentor, passing on painting techniques, philosophies and stories that he himself had learnt from his grandfather. Tarisse worked closely beside her father while gradually developing her own ideas and visual language, establishing herself as a professional artist in her own right in her early twenties.

William King often approached the landscape from an expansive, almost aerial perspective, and this way of seeing Country became an important foundation for Tarisse’s own practice. One of the most significant expressions of this legacy is her Earth Images series, a style painted by William and passed to Tarisse, his eldest daughter. Tarisse has continued to develop the design through her own distinctive use of colour, layered dotting and composition.

Across series including Earth Images, My Country, Pink Salts, Blue Salts and Gurindji Ancestors, Tarisse explores Country from shifting perspectives. Rivers and tributaries become branching pathways across the canvas, campsites and places of significance appear as circular forms, and dense fields of dots build landscapes that seem to move between close detail and vast aerial views. Her salt lake paintings draw particularly on memories of travelling through inland Australia, capturing the extraordinary colours, textures and patterns of these seemingly sparse landscapes.

Tarisse’s work is contemporary in its colour and composition while remaining grounded in family, storytelling and knowledge passed between generations. She sees her practice not simply as a way of looking back, but as a means of carrying culture forward, particularly for her own children and the generations who follow. Her work is deeply connected to ancestors, culture, Country and nature, with the continuation of storytelling at the heart of what she does.

Her creative practice has also expanded beyond painting into sculpture, installation, textiles, fashion, jewellery and design. Her large-scale Campsites sculpture translates one of her recurring painted stories into three-dimensional form using steel and natural stone. Created in 2022, the work was acquired in 2023 for the permanent public sculpture collection at Dungog Common in New South Wales.

Tarisse now lives in Aotearoa New Zealand with her partner and their five children, where she continues to paint and develop her wider creative practice from her home studio. Motherhood has strengthened the intergenerational focus within her work, with family, cultural continuity and the passing of knowledge to children becoming increasingly important themes.

More recently, Tarisse and Sarrita founded KingKing Creative, a Blak-owned creative business based on Larrakia Country in Darwin. Building on more than two decades as contemporary artists, the sisters transform their original artworks into fashion, jewellery, accessories and homewares, carrying their stories from Country into contemporary design.

KingKing Creative made its Country to Couture debut in Darwin in 2025 with Maju Karlaj (sister sister), a collection inspired by the sisters’ childhood journeys between Adelaide and Darwin. The label went on to make its Melbourne Fashion Week debut on the ganbu marra runway later that year. In 2026, KingKing appeared on the Beyond Blak runway at the PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival and at First Nations Fashion + Design: Reclamation in Sydney.

In May 2026, Tarisse and Sarrita made their Australian Fashion Week debut with KingKing Creative as part of the New Generation showcase. Their ten-look collection, Calling from Country, translated original artworks by the sisters into contemporary fashion while celebrating Country, identity, family and the continuing legacy of their father William King Jungala.

Today Tarisse’s work moves confidently between fine art, sculpture and design. Whether painting Country from above, translating family stories into sculptural form or working alongside her sister through KingKing Creative, her practice remains centred on connection between past and future, carrying forward the stories given to her while creating something for the generations still to come.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

• 2011 Connections: First Solo Exhibition, Gallery 577, Melbourne

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

• 2026 Resonance, Liberty Place, Sydney
• 2026 Recent Works: Tarisse King and more, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
• 2024 Black + White, Kate Owen Gallery, Sydney
• 2023 Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, Sydney
• 2022 Connection, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
• 2022 Connection | King Sisters Sculptures Exhibition, Kate Owen Gallery, Sydney
• 2021 Land + Sky, Kate Owen Gallery, Sydney
• 2019 Tarisse King & Sarrita King, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
• 2018 Earth Language, Aboriginal Art Gallery, Rotterdam
• 2018 Sarrita and Tarisse King, East Hotel, Canberra
• 2017 Ancestors, Elements, Heritage, Sarrita King & Tarisse King, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
• 2016 Battersea Art Fair, Aboriginal Art Galleries, London
• 2016 Hong Kong Contemporary, Hong Kong
• 2015 King Sisters Artist in Residence, Kate Owen Gallery, Sydney
• 2014 Sarrita & Tarisse King, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle
• 2013 Art Hong Kong, Hong Kong
• 2012 Art Expo, Singapore
• 2012 Contemporary Art, Artcurial, Paris
• 2010 In Our Father’s Eyes, Aboriginal Dreamtime Gallery, Los Angeles
• 2009 Artcurial Auction and Exhibition, Paris, France
• 2006 Kings Exhibition, La Jolla, California, USA

FASHION & DESIGN

• 2026 Australian Fashion Week, New Generation Showcase, Calling from Country, KingKing Creative, Sydney
• 2026 PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival, Beyond Blak Runway, KingKing Creative, Melbourne
• 2026 Showcase First Nations Fashion + Design: Reclamation, KingKing Creative, Artspace, Sydney
• 2025 Melbourne Fashion Week, ganbu marra runway, KingKing Creative, Melbourne
• 2025 Country to Couture, Maju Karlaj (sister sister), KingKing Creative, Darwin

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

• 2026 National Indigenous Fashion Awards, Business Achievement Award Finalist, KingKing Creative, Sarrita & Tarisse King
• 2024 National Contemporary Art Prize, Canberra, Finalist
• 2023 Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, Sydney, selected artist, Turtle
• 2023 Campsites, acquired for the permanent public sculpture collection at Dungog Common, NSW
• 2019 Sarrita and Tarisse King’s artwork selected to wrap the BMW flagship store, Rushcutters Bay, Sydney
• 2014 Pommery Champagne Pop Art Series Labels, Sarrita & Tarisse King

SELECTED PUBLIC ART & SCULPTURE

• 2023 Campsites, Dungog Common Recreation Reserve, Dungog NSW. Created in 2022 and acquired for permanent public display in 2023
• 2023 Turtle, Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, Sydney
• 2022 Connection | King Sisters Sculptures Exhibition, Kate Owen Gallery, Sydney

Tarisse King draws inspiration from her travels between Darwin and Adelaide, a journey that takes her through the vast and continually changing landscapes of inland Australia.

In her Pink Salts series, Tarisse explores the extraordinary colours of the salt lakes, where vivid shades of pink and red can appear across the landscape. The intense colour recalls both the glow of sunrise and sunset and the remarkable natural hues found within these highly saline environments.

Tarisse overlays these rich pink tones with soft metallic silver and pearl dots, suggesting the salt crystals that crust the surface of the land. The dots gather and flow in intricate patterns, reflecting the shifting marks created by wind across the broad, flat lake beds.

Through colour, texture and movement, Tarisse captures the unexpected beauty of these seemingly sparse landscapes, revealing salt lakes as places of remarkable variation, delicacy and natural splendour.