Rover Thomas Joolama was an Indigenous Australian artist.

Early life

He was born at Gunawaggi in the Great Sandy Desert

Great Sandy Desert

The Great Sandy Desert is a desert located in the North West of Western Australia straddling the Pilbara and southern Kimberley regions. It is the second largest desert in Australia after the Great Victoria Desert and encompasses an area of...

 of Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

. At the age of 10 Rover and his family moved to the Kimberley

Kimberley region of Western Australia

The Kimberley is one of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is located in the northern part of Western Australia, bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy and Tanami Deserts, and on the east by the Northern Territory.The region...

 where, as was usual at the time, he began work as a stockman. Later in his life Thomas lived at Turkey Creek where he and his friend Paddy Tjamati broke away from the tradition of producing tribal art

Tribal art

Tribal art is an umbrella term used to describe visual arts and material culture of indigenous peoples. Also known as Ethnographic art, or, controversially, Primitive Art, tribal arts have historically been collected by Western anthropologists, private collectors, and museums, particularly...

 on canvas and instead painted landscapes on dismembered tea chest

Tea chest

A tea chest is a type of wooden case originally produced and used to ship tea to the United Kingdom. The conventional tea chest is a case with riveted metal edges, of approximate size 500x500x750 millimetres. The term is now used more widely to indicate similarly-sized cases, including cardboard...

s.

Artist

Thomas was awarded the John McCaughey Prize in 1990 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Art Gallery of New South Wales

The Art Gallery of New South Wales , located in The Domain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was established in 1897 and is the most important public gallery in Sydney and the fourth largest in Australia...

. Thomas was one of the two Aboriginal Australians to exhibit in the Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

 in 1990, alongside Trevor Nickolls.. He was the subject of the important solo exhibition Roads Cross: The Paintings of Rover Thomas, National Gallery of Australia

National Gallery of Australia

The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...

, Canberra

Canberra

Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...

 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

Neva Enfilade of the Winter Palace

The Neva Enfilade of the Winter Palace, St Petersburg is a series of three large halls arranged in an enfilade along the palace's massive facade facing the River Neva....

 at the Hermitage Museum

Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...

 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.

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

External links

• Rover Thomas Education Kit
• Rover Thomas: I want to paint, Art Gallery of New South Wales
  Art Gallery of New South Wales
  The Art Gallery of New South Wales , located in The Domain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was established in 1897 and is the most important public gallery in Sydney and the fourth largest in Australia...
  
  , 2004