Roads Cross

Born in 1926, Rover Thomas has spent most of his life working as a stockman in the East 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 Aboriginal artists to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1990.

This apparently meteoric rise says little of the place and history of the artist in the traditional life of the East Kimberley — for Rover Thomas was at the heart of a cultural revival partly engendered by the events which followed the destruction of Darwin by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Day 1974, but mainly due to the revelation of a public ceremony, the Krill Krill, which Rover received from the spirit of a recently deceased relative and which became a vehicle by which Aboriginal people in the East Kimberley could express the strength of their culture to the world at large.

Cyclone Tracy was interpreted as the Rainbow Serpent by Aboriginal elders in the Kimberley — and the destruction of the centre of European culture in that area was a warning to Aboriginal people to keep their culture strong. As a consequence, ceremonial activity increased throughout the Kimberley.

At about the same time, a woman — in kinship terms, equivalent to Rover's mother — was critically injured in a vehicle accident near Turkey Creek. She was taken first to Wyndham by road and then evacuated to Perth by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. It is said that she died as the plane flew over a whirlpool off the coast of Derby — which is both the home and a physical manifestation of Juntarkal, a Rainbow Snake. Juntarkal and other Rainbow Snakes imbue the Kimberley landscape with an eternal life force.

The spirit of the deceased woman described to Rover Thomas its journey, accompanied by other spirits, to several sites of either sacred or historical importance across the Kimberley. From Kununurra, the spirits witnessed the destruction of Darwin by a Rainbow Serpent in the guise of Cyclone Tracy.

In the Krill Krill corroboree or palga, dancers carry painted boards across their shoulders. In the first years of its performance, Rover did not paint the boards but as the owner of the images, instructed other painters — notably his uncle, Paddy Jaminji — in the execution of the designs. The early boards usually carry single motifs or simple images, and the context in which these operate is given by the accompanying songs and dances.As paintings on boards and later canvas were made separate from the Krill Krill palga, the compositions became more complex.

Rover Thomas has developed a personal style which is soundly rooted in his knowledge of the traditional pictorial conventions of the region. His works incorporate all the traits of East Kimberley rock art and the more ephemeral body painting traditions. His landscapes. rendered in broad areas of natural pigments and gums, appear both in plan view and side on, often simultaneously. They throw a new and vibrant perspective on the nature of Aboriginal perception and depiction of country. Shapes are delineated by white dots, a convention found also in the desert.

The landscapes relate to tracts of country with specific indicators to sites of either traditional or historic importance, and twentieth-century iconography is incorporated when necessary. At the same time, they are imbued with the presence and mystery of the Narungani, or creative past, and the power of beings who inhabited it and who can still be invoked through ritual.

In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Rover Thomas tells his own stories of the getting of the Krill Krill and of the various massacres he has painted. His commentaries have been recorded in Kriol, a language with its own grammar and conventions, which is spoken throughout much of Aboriginal Australia with local variations.

Wally Caruana
Curator of Aboriginal Art

Kim Akerman
Curator, Australian Pre-history, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory