Sugar Bag Hill (from the Kurirr Kurirr series)
Rover THOMAS: artist
Curatorial insight
Rover Thomas (Joolama) spent most of his life working as a stockman in the eastern Kimberley in the north of Western Australia. He began painting on a regular basis in 1981, and within a decade his vigorous and prolific creativity led to his selection as one of the first two Indigenous artists to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale, in 1990. In the mid-1980s the Aboriginal community of Warmun, adjacent to Turkey Creek, was the first in the East Kimberley to be recognised as a distinctive artistic region, widening non-Indigenous perspectives of Indigenous art, which had been preoccupied with the Arnhem Land and the Western Desert art traditions. (Croft, Indigenous Art: Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2001)
Rover Thomas (Joolama) spent most of his life working as a stockman in the eastern Kimberley in the north of Western Australia. He began painting on a regular basis in 1981, and within a decade his vigorous and prolific creativity led to his selection as one of the first two Indigenous artists to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale, in 1990. In the mid-1980s the Aboriginal community of Warmun, adjacent to Turkey Creek, was the first in the East Kimberley to be recognised as a distinctive artistic region, widening non-Indigenous perspectives of Indigenous art, which had been preoccupied with the Arnhem Land and the Western Desert art traditions. (Croft, Indigenous Art: Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2001)
Title
Sugar Bag Hill (from the Kurirr Kurirr series)
Artist/Maker and role
Rover THOMAS: artist
Date
1988
Medium
ochres on gum on canvas
Measurements
60 x 105cm
Credit line
Purchased 1988
© Rover Thomas / Copyright Agency
The State Art Collection, The Art Gallery of Western Australia
Accession number
1988/0171