Rover Thomas
Yillimbiddi Country, 1988
Kukaja/Wangkajunga people

natural earth pigments and bush gum on canvas
100.0 x 140.0 cm
SOLD

Provenance:
Waringarri Aboriginal Arts, Warmun, Western Australia, cat. nos: S: 1422 and AP1692
On loan to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1999-2003
Private collection, Sydney.

Exhibited:
Aboriginal Art of the East Kimberley, Aboriginal Arts Australia for Waringarri Aboriginal Arts, Western Australia; Crafts Council Gallery, Sydney, October 1988, cat. no. 8
Adelaide Biennale of Art, 2 March to 22 April 1990, Art Gallery of South Australia
Another Country, 4 September 1999 to 18 June 2000, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Yirribana Foyer Exhibition, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 18 May to 5 September 2001
True Stories: Art of the East Kimberley, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 11 January to 27 April 2003

Literature:
Smee, S., ‘True Stories: Art of the East Kimberley,’ The Art Newspaper, edition no. 132, January 2003, p. 26
Eagle, M. (ed), Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 1990, p. 108 (illus.)

Rover Thomas was the doyen of the painting movement that emerged in the eastern Kimberley region around 1980, focused on the Aboriginal community of Warmun adjacent to the township of Turkey Creek. He was also the owner of a public ceremony called the Kurirr Kurirr which he had revealed to him by the spirit of an aunt who had died from injuries incurred in a car crash on a road flooded by the rains of Cyclone Tracy at the end of 1974. The woman was being taken to hospital by the Royal Flying Doctor when she died above a whirlpool off the coast of Broome in the west. The Kurirr Kurirr relates the women’s spirit’s journey across the Kimberley back home in the east where she witnesses the destruction of Darwin by an ancestral Rainbow Serpent in the guise of a cyclone.

By tradition, Rover’s classificatory uncle, Paddy Jaminji (c.1921-1996) was the original painter of the boards carried by performers in the Kurirr Kurirr ceremonies. Rover did not commence to paint for the public domain until the early 1980s. His career as an artist had a mercurial trajectory. In 1990 he was awarded the John McCaughey Prize for the best painting displayed at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in that year with a work entitled Blancher Country, 1987. In 1990 he along with Trevor Nickolls was the first Aboriginal artist to represent Australian at the Venice Biennale and in that and the following years his work featured in several major exhibitions overseas. In 1994 the National Gallery of Australia honored the artist with a retrospective exhibition, Roads Cross: The Paintings of Rover Thomas.

Yillimbiddi Country depicts a site visited by the spirit of Rover’s aunt. It shows the pass in the Napier Range through which the road to Derby runs, near Mount House Station in the central Kimberley. The yellow arc emerging from the lower edge of the canvas is the large hill Yilimbirri (Yillimbiddi), the metamorphosed body of the ancestral Goanna Yilimbirri. The arc at the top left and the circle at the lower right both represent Kanu Kanu (a site known as Goanna Flat). Part of the Napier Range (Yawal-lulma) is represented by the arc in the top right. The road to Derby continues beyond the right edge of the painting. As Rover’s paintings of country are more than mere maps, he has oriented the image with south at the top of the canvas, and north at the bottom.

The years 1986 to 1989 are widely regarded as the zenith of Rover’s creativity. This painting displays the qualities of ‘austerity and gravity’ (Smee: 2003) typical of his best work; the ochres mixed with natural resins produce a deep, resonant and visually rich surface.