{{short description|Indigenous Australian artist (1926–1998)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2025}} {{Use Australian English|date=June 2015}} {{Infobox person | name = Rover Thomas | image = | alt = | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth year|1926}} | birth_place = Western Australia, Australia | death_date = 11 April {{Death year and age|1998|1926}} | death_place = Warmun (Turkey Creek), East Kimberley, Western Australia, Australia | other_names = Roba, Juluma, Joowoorroo/Juwurru | occupation = Stockman, artist | years_active = | known_for = Painting | notable_works = 'All That Big Rain Coming from the Top Side' (1991)'Railway Bridge, Katherine' (1984), 'Bedford Downs Massacre' (1985), 'Two men dreaming' (1985), 'The Story of Owl (Dumbiny)' (1988), 'Yari country' (1989), 'Barramundi Dreaming' (1989), 'Cyclone Tracy' (1991). | relatives = Nyuju Stumpy Brown (sister) }}
'''Rover Thomas Joolama''' ({{circa}}1926 – 11 April 1998), commonly known as simply '''Rover Thomas''', was a Wangkajunga and Kukatja Aboriginal Australian artist.
==Early life== Rover Thomas was born in 1925 near Gunawaggii, at Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route, in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://australianmuseum.net.au/explore-rovers-legacy|title=Rover's Legacy|access-date=2012-04-30|last=Murphy|first=Gráinne|publisher=Australian Museum}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.aboriginal-bark-paintings.com/paddy-jaminji-2/|title=Paddy Jaminji {{!}} Paddy (jampin) Jaminji {{!}} sell Paddy Jaminji {{!}} Tjamintji|date=2019-06-04|website=Aboriginal Bark Paintings|language=en-US|access-date=2020-04-04}}</ref> Thomas was inspired to paint by a mystical experience of being visited by his deceased kinship mother after the disaster of Cyclone Tracy, which he interpreted as a warning against the decline of Indigenous cultural practices.<ref name="auto">{{cite web|url=https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/thomas-rover/|title=Rover Thomas | Art Gallery of NSW}}</ref> The Krill Krill ceremony included dances, songs and the painted boards tracing the woman's after-life journey from her death near Derby back to the place of her birth near Turkey Creek.<ref name="auto1">{{cite web|url=https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/rover-thomas/|title=Rover Thomas: I want to paint | NGV}}</ref> He would return to the theme of Cyclone Tracy in a later work now in the National Gallery of Australia collection.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://nga.gov.au/on-demand/rover-thomas-joolama-cyclone-tracy/|title=Rover Thomas [Joolama] 'Cyclone Tracy'}}</ref>
==East Kimberley School== 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.aboriginal-bark-paintings.com/rover-thomas/|title=Rover Thomas {{!}} Rover Thomas Joolama {{!}} sell Rover Thomas {{!}} Julama|date=2019-05-31|website=Aboriginal Bark Paintings|language=en-US|access-date=2020-04-04}}</ref>
One series of paintings from this time depicted massacre sites from the frontier wars in the Kimberley. Notable works include 'Bedford Downs Massacre' and 'Camp at Mistake Creek'. A National Gallery of Victoria curator noted the works dual roles as history painting and landscape painting: <blockquote>While these images describe actual events of cultural and social importance as remembered and passed down in oral history; they are at the same time, superb planer constructions of colour and form as in the dominant, central black shape and contrasting 'country' of Lake Paruku.<ref name="auto1"/></blockquote> Thomas likened the works of American abstract expressionist Mark Rothko to his own work saying: 'That bugger paints like me!’.<ref name="auto"/>
Rover Thomas was inspired by many East Kimberley artists who heed follow including Queenie McKenzie, Freddie Timms and Paddy Bedford<ref>{{Cite book|last=Thomas, Rover.|title=Rover Thomas : I want to paint.|date=2003|publisher=Heytesbury Pty Ltd|others=Carrigan, Belinda., Christensen, Will., National Gallery of Victoria.|isbn=0-9581792-1-2|location=East Perth, Western Australia|oclc=200378979}}</ref>
==Exhibitions==
He was the subject of the important solo exhibition ''Roads Cross: The Paintings of Rover Thomas'', National Gallery of Australia, Canberra in 1994.<ref>{{Cite web |last=National Gallery of Australia |date= |title=Roads Cross - National Gallery of Australia |url=https://nga.gov.au/exhibitions/roads-cross/ |url-status=live |access-date=19 May 2026}}</ref>
In 2000, Thomas's work was among 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:<blockquote> 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.<ref>{{cite news|last=Grishin|first=Sasha|title=Aboriginal art makes it to the top|work=The Canberra Times|date=15 April 2000}}</ref></blockquote>
==Awards and recognition== In 1990 Thomas was awarded the John McCaughey Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.<ref name=adg>{{cite web|title=Rover Thomas Joolama – Sydney Harbour|website=Aboriginal Dreamings Gallery|url=http://www.aboriginaldream.com/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&view=productdetails&virtuemart_product_id=138&virtuemart_category_id=17|access-date=10 March 2022}}</ref><ref name=menzies>{{cite web|title=ROVER THOMAS (JULAMA) Bungullgi 1989|website=Menzies Art Brands|url=https://www.menziesartbrands.com/blog-post/rover-thomas-julama-bungullgi-1989|access-date=10 March 2022}}</ref>
In 1990 he became the first Aboriginal Australian to exhibit in the Venice Biennale, alongside Trevor Nickolls.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118157470|title=Retrospective works display rare intensity.|newspaper=The Canberra Times|date=12 March 1994|access-date=1 December 2013|page=7|via=National Library of Australia}}</ref>
==Collections== Thomas' work is held in many major collections, including:<ref name=adg/> * Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney * Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide * Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth * Berndt Museum of Anthropology, University of Western Australia * Holmes à Court Collection, Perth, WA<ref name="HolmesaCourt">{{cite web|url=http://www.holmesacourtgallery.com.au/collection/index.cfm|title=The Holmes à Court Collection|publisher=Holmes à Court Gallery|access-date=13 January 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080719142455/http://www.holmesacourtgallery.com.au/collection/index.cfm|archive-date=19 July 2008}}</ref> * The Kelton Foundation, Santa Monica, California, U.S. * Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, Northern Territory * National Gallery of Australia, Canberra * National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne * Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
==See also== * Indigenous Australian art
==References== {{reflist}}
==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}}.
==External links== * [http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/thomas-rover/ Rover Thomas] at the Art Gallery of New South Wales * [https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/thomas-juluma-rover-32000 Juluma Rover Thomas (c. 1926–1998)] at the Australian Dictionary of Biography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Rover}} Category:Year of birth uncertain Category:1998 deaths Category:Australian Aboriginal artists Category:Indigenous Australians from Western Australia Category:1920s births Category:People from Warmun Community Category:20th-century Australian painters Category:Australian contemporary artists Category:20th-century Indigenous Australian people