My Hand, 1993

natural earth pigments on canvas

90 x 60 cm; 95 x 64.5 cm (framed)

Est. $25,000 – $35,000

Provenance: Chapman Gallery, Canberra, ACT Private Collection, USA Cooee Art, Indigenous Fine Art Spring Sale, Sydney, NSW, 8 March 2022, Lot 22 Private Collection, Vic Accompanied by certificates of authenticity from Chapman Gallery and Cooee Art
Artwork story: Two handprints, each outlined in white dots, rest in a field of deep brown ochre. Judith Behan of Chapman Gallery recorded on the certificate she signed in July 1994 that this is Nyinyberrayin — country near Texas Downs homestead east of Turkey Creek, the Dreaming place of the female plains kangaroo. A black line crosses the upper register: a bitumen road. The ochre field below is held within its own border of white dots, the country bounded as it is in ceremony. Thomas was born at Gunwaggi, Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route in the Great Sandy Desert, and spent much of his working life as a stockman and fencing contractor across remote Western Australia and the NT before settling at Warmun. It was there, in the mid-1970s, that he received the Gurrir Gurrir — a ceremony born from the spirit journey of a recently deceased female relative, whose journey from her death over a whirlpool off the coast of Derby back to her birthplace near Turkey Creek became the founding narrative of Warmun painting. The ceremony was performed on painted boards carried on the shoulders of dancers, and the artists of Warmun still call their canvases boards. Thomas began painting regularly in 1981 and by 1990 was among the first Aboriginal artists selected to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale. My Hand was made three years later.

Catalogues177 of 257

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Sale 3 · Lot 29

Rover Julama Thomas

c.1926 – 1998

Region: Western Desert
Community: Warmun (Turkey Creek)
Language group: Wangkajunga; Kukatja

My Hand, 1993

natural earth pigments on canvas

90 x 60 cm; 95 x 64.5 cm (framed)

Est. $25,000 – $35,000

Provenance: Chapman Gallery, Canberra, ACT Private Collection, USA Cooee Art, Indigenous Fine Art Spring Sale, Sydney, NSW, 8 March 2022, Lot 22 Private Collection, Vic Accompanied by certificates of authenticity from Chapman Gallery and Cooee Art
Artwork story: Two handprints, each outlined in white dots, rest in a field of deep brown ochre. Judith Behan of Chapman Gallery recorded on the certificate she signed in July 1994 that this is Nyinyberrayin — country near Texas Downs homestead east of Turkey Creek, the Dreaming place of the female plains kangaroo. A black line crosses the upper register: a bitumen road. The ochre field below is held within its own border of white dots, the country bounded as it is in ceremony. Thomas was born at Gunwaggi, Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route in the Great Sandy Desert, and spent much of his working life as a stockman and fencing contractor across remote Western Australia and the NT before settling at Warmun. It was there, in the mid-1970s, that he received the Gurrir Gurrir — a ceremony born from the spirit journey of a recently deceased female relative, whose journey from her death over a whirlpool off the coast of Derby back to her birthplace near Turkey Creek became the founding narrative of Warmun painting. The ceremony was performed on painted boards carried on the shoulders of dancers, and the artists of Warmun still call their canvases boards. Thomas began painting regularly in 1981 and by 1990 was among the first Aboriginal artists selected to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale. My Hand was made three years later.