Rover Thomas Joolama (1926 – 11 April 1998), commonly known as simply Rover Thomas, was a Wangkajunga and Kukatja

Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia 50,000 to 65,000 year ...

artist.

Early life

Rover Thomas was born in 1925 near Gunawaggii, at Well 33 on the

Canning Stock Route The Canning Stock Route is a track that runs from Halls Creek, Western Australia, Halls Creek in the Kimberley (Western Australia), Kimberley region of Western Australia to Wiluna, Western Australia, Wiluna in the Mid West (Western Australia), ...

, in the

Great Sandy Desert The Great Sandy Desert is an interim Australian bioregion,IBRA Version 6.1
data

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

. At the age of 10 Thomas and his family moved to the

Kimberley Kimberly or Kimberley may refer to: Places and historical events Australia Queensland * Kimberley, Queensland, a coastal locality in the Shire of Douglas South Australia * County of Kimberley, a cadastral unit in South Australia Ta ...

where, as was usual at the time, he began work as a stockman. Later in his life Thomas lived at Turkey Creek. Rover Thomas and his Uncle Paddy Jaminji first started painting dance boards on dismembered tea chests for the Krill Krill ceremony in 1977. Thomas was inspired to paint by a mystical experience of being visited by his deceased kinship mother after the disaster of

Cyclone Tracy Severe Tropical Cyclone Tracy was a small but destructive tropical cyclone that devastated the city of Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia, in December 1974. The small but developing easterly storm was or ...

, which he interpreted as a warning against the decline of Indigenous cultural practices. The Krill Krill ceremony included dances, songs and the painted boards tracing the woman's after-life journey from her death near

Derby Derby ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area on the River Derwent, Derbyshire, River Derwent in Derbyshire, England. Derbyshire is named after Derby, which was its original co ...

back to the place of her birth near Turkey Creek. He would return to the theme of Cyclone Tracy in a later work now in the

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

collection.

East Kimberley School

In the early 1980s, Rover Thomas started painting

ochre Ochre ( ; , ), iron ochre, or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colou ...

on canvas and soon became a pioneer artist of what was later known as the East Kimberley School. One series of paintings from this time depicted massacre sites from the frontier wars in the Kimberley. Notable works include ' Bedford Downs Massacre' and 'Camp at Mistake Creek'. A

National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and list of most visited art museums in the world, most visited art mu ...

curator noted the works dual roles as

history painting History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than any artistic style or specific period. History paintings depict a moment in a narrative story, most often (but not exclusively) Greek and Roman mythology and B ...

and

landscape painting Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction in painting of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, rivers, trees, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a cohe ...

While these images describe actual events of cultural and social importance as remembered and passed down in oral history; they are at the same time, superb planer constructions of colour and form as in the dominant, central black shape and contrasting 'country' of Lake Paruku.

Thomas likened the works of American

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

Mark Rothko Mark Rothko ( ; Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz until 1940; September 25, 1903February 25, 1970) was an American abstract art, abstract painter. He is best known for his color field paintings that depicted irregular and painterly rectangular reg ...

to his own work saying: 'That bugger paints like me!’. Rover Thomas was inspired by many East Kimberley artists who heed follow including Queenie McKenzie, Freddie Timms and Paddy Bedford

Exhibitions

He was the subject of the important solo exhibition ''Roads Cross: The Paintings of Rover Thomas'',

, Canberra in 1994. In 2000, Thomas's work was among that of eight individual and collaborative groups of Indigenous Australian artists shown in the prestigious Nicholas Hall at the

Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and holds the large ...

in Russia. The exhibition received a positive reception from Russian critics, one of whom wrote:

This is an exhibition of contemporary art, not in the sense that it was done recently, but in that it is cased in the mentality, technology and philosophy of radical art of the most recent times. No one, other than the Aborigines of Australia, has succeeded in exhibiting such art at the Hermitage.

Awards and recognition

In 1990 Thomas was awarded the

John McCaughey Prize The John McCaughey Prize, also known as the John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize, McCaughey Prize, McCaughey Art Prize or McCaughey Art Award, is an Australian art prize awarded to an artist or artists, under which the National Gallery of Victoria a ...

at the

Art Gallery of New South Wales The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most import ...

. In 1990 he became the first Aboriginal Australian to exhibit in the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

, alongside Trevor Nickolls.

Collections

Thomas' work is held in many major collections, including: *

, Sydney * Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide *

Art Gallery of Western Australia The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) is a public art gallery that is part of the Perth Cultural Centre, in Perth. It is located near the Western Australian Museum and State Library of Western Australia and is supported and managed by the ...

, Perth *

Berndt Museum of Anthropology The Berndt Museum of Anthropology is an anthropological museum in Perth, Western Australia, founded in by Ronald Berndt and Catherine Berndt. It is currently, , located with the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery on the western side of the Univers ...

University of Western Australia University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Crawley, Western Australia, Crawley, a suburb in the City of Perth local government area. UW ...

* Holmes à Court Collection, Perth, WA * The Kelton Foundation, Santa Monica, California, U.S. * Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, Northern Territory *

, Canberra *

, Melbourne * Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

References

Bibliography

*McAlpine, Lord Alistair (2002). ''Adventures of a Collector''.

Allen and Unwin George Allen & Unwin was a British publishing company formed in 1911 when Sir Stanley Unwin purchased a controlling interest in George Allen & Co. It became one of the leading publishers of the twentieth century and established an Australian ...

. . *Van Den Bosch, Annette (2005). ''Australian Art World: Aesthetics in a Global Market''. Allen and Unwin. .

External links

Rover Thomas
at the

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Rover Year of birth uncertain 1998 deaths Australian Aboriginal artists Indigenous Australians from Western Australia 1920s births People from Warmun Community 20th-century Australian painters Australian contemporary artists