Rover Thomas

Rover Thomas Joolama (c. 1926 – 11 April 1998) was an Indigenous Australian artist.

Rover Thomas
Born1926 (1926)
Western Australia, Australia
Died11 April 1998 (aged 71–72)
Warmun (Turkey Creek), East Kimberley, Western Australia, Australia
Other namesRoba
Known forPainting
RelativesNyuju Stumpy Brown (sister)

Early life

Rover Thomas was born in 1926 near Gunawaggii, at Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route, in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia.[1] At the age of 10 Thomas and his family moved to the Kimberley 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[2]. In the early 1980s, Rover Thomas started painting ochre on canvas and soon became a pioneer artist of what was later known as the East Kimberley School[3]. Rover Thomas was the inspiration for many East Kimberley artists who followed including Queenie Mckenzie, Freddie Timms and Paddy Bedford[4]


Artist

Thomas was awarded the John McCaughey Prize in 1990 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Thomas was one of the two Aboriginal Australians to exhibit in the Venice Biennale in 1990, alongside Trevor Nickolls.[5] He was the subject of the important solo exhibition Roads Cross: The Paintings of Rover Thomas, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra in 1994.

In 2000, Thomas's work was amongst that of eight individual and collaborative groups of Indigenous Australian artists shown in the prestigious Nicholas Hall at the Hermitage Museum 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.[6]

Thomas and Emily Kame Kngwarreye were amongst the most successful Australian artists in the national and global art markets

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See also

Collections
  • Holmes à Court Collection[7]

References
  1. Murphy, Gráinne. "Rover's Legacy". Australian Museum. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  2. "Paddy Jaminji | Paddy (jampin) Jaminji | sell Paddy Jaminji | Tjamintji". Aboriginal Bark Paintings. 4 June 2019. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  3. "Rover Thomas | Rover Thomas Joolama | sell Rover Thomas | Julama". Aboriginal Bark Paintings. 31 May 2019. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  4. Thomas, Rover. (2003). Rover Thomas : I want to paint. Carrigan, Belinda., Christensen, Will., National Gallery of Victoria. East Perth, Western Australia: Heytesbury Pty Ltd. ISBN 0-9581792-1-2. OCLC 200378979.
  5. "Retrospective works display rare intensity". The Canberra Times. 12 March 1994. p. 7. Retrieved 1 December 2013 – via National Library of Australia.
  6. Grishin, Sasha (15 April 2000). "Aboriginal art makes it to the top". Canberra Times.
  7. "The Holmes à Court Collection". Holmes à Court Gallery. Archived from the original on 19 July 2008. Retrieved 13 January 2011.

Bibliography
  • McAlpine, Lord Alistair (2002). Adventures of a Collector. Allen and Unwin. ISBN 1-86508-786-6.
  • Van Den Bosch, Annette (2005). Australian Art World: Aesthetics in a Global Market. Allen and Unwin. ISBN 1-74114-455-8.
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