Rover Thomas

Rover Thomas (1926-1998), Kukatja-Wangkajunga artist, was born in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia and worked as a stockman and fencer before losing his employment upon the introduction of equal pay for indigenous workers in 1975. The year he moved to Warmun, where he dreamed of a ceremony called the Kurirr Kurirr (Krill Krill). He told his uncle Paddy Juminji the details of the images he had dreamed, and Juminji painted them onto boards to be carried on the shoulders of participants in the ceremony. In 1981 Thomas began painting the Kurirr Kurirr himself. He soon moved on to views of his ancestral lands and depictions of events in ancient and modern history, such as Cyclone Tracy and the Bedford Downs Massacre. Along with Trevor Nickolls, he was the first Aboriginal artist to represent Australia officially at the Venice Biennale, in 1990. Four years later the NGA mounted a major retrospective of his work, and he featured in a host of major group exhibitions in Australia and overseas in the ensuing years. Rover Thomas: I want to paint, featuring 19 works from the Holmes à Court collection, toured nationally in 2004.