Lindsay Malay is a Gija man. His grandfather’s country is on Corolla Cattle Station (Old Bedford Downs) and his grandmother’s country is Yulumbu (Tableland Station), Warlawoon Country. Malay was born in Wyndham and grew up on Bedford Downs Cattle Station, and now lives in the Warmun Community.
In 2010, Malay's family won back their country - Warlawoon - which was broken off from the Yulumbu pastoral lease. Lindsay has inherited this country from his Grandmother. Rammey Ramsey, one of Warmun Art Centre's senior artists, is the only remaining Elder from Warlawoon country. In 2012, Malay and family returned to Victoria to support their son, who was following a career in rodeo. It was during this time that Malay began to paint, as a way of reconnecting - through art - with his home in the Kimberley.
Malay's artistic achievements include, as a debutant, being featured in the seminal exhibition 'When The Sky Fell - Legacies of the 1967 Referendum', curated by Clothilde Bullen and held at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art in 2017. The exhibition told stories through the eyes of Indigenous artists about station life, and how the Australian vote in the 1967 Referendum favouring wages for Indigenous people resulted in many of the pastoral workers and stockmen walking off the stations or being let off their jobs when the station owners refused to remunerate them.
Malay has been selected for the Salon des Refuses for the 2016 and 2019 Telstra NATSIAA, and nominated as the “Revealed” artist at the Fremantle Art Centre in 2017. He was shortlisted as a finalist in the Hedland Art Awards in 2017 and 2018, and was featured in the landmark 'Desert River Sea' (2019) exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.