Rover Thomas (Joolama) circa 1926-1998 UNTITLED (THE SERPENTS - JUNTARKAL AND WUNGURR)

Painted in the East Kimberley in 1987
Mary Macha, Perth
Private collection
Niagara Galleries, Melbourne
Private collection

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Cf. For two related paintings, by Rover Thomas, connected to the Kurirr Kurirr ceremony see Wungurr is the name for that Snake, 1983, and Ngamarrin (The Snake near Turkey Creek), 1984, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, in R. Thomas with K. Akerman, M. Macha, W. Christensen and W. Caruana, Roads Cross: The paintings of Rover Thomas, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1994, pp. 28 and 38 respectively, illus.

Painted during the most fertile period of the artist's career in 1987, this work is one of those in which Rover Thomas revisits the imagery used in the original Kurirr Kurirr ceremonies and the associated Dreaming of which he was the traditional owner. In this case it is the image of the two Rainbow Serpents: Juntarkal from the western Kimberley, and Wungurr who, in the guise of Cyclone Tracy, destroyed Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974.

By the early 1970s the Aboriginal people of the Kimberley had experienced the disruption of their links to their traditional lands and culture appeared to be on the wane. As people across the Kimberley regard Darwin as the centre of European culture in northern Australia, its destruction by a cyclone was interpreted as a warning by an ancestral Rainbow Serpent (these ancestors are normally associated with cyclones and the wet season) to Aboriginal people to maintain their culture and practices. As a result a number of rituals were performed to non-Indigenous audiences as an act of cultural affirmation.

The Kurirr Kurirr ritual and its accompanying imagery, choreography and songs were revealed to Thomas in the aftermath of the cyclone by the spirit of a classificatory mother. The woman had succumbed to injuries incurred in a car that had crashed on a road flooded by the rains of the cyclone, near the community of Warmun (Turkey Creek), the artist's domicile. The woman was being taken by the Royal Flying Doctor Service to hospital in Perth but she died while the airplane was flying over a whirlpool, off the coast of Derby; the whirlpool is regarded as the physical manifestation of Juntarkal, whose influence spreads east right across into the Northern Territory. The Kurirr Kurirr chronicles the journey of the women's spirit across the Kimberley, visiting sites of ancestral and historical significance on the return to her home in the east from where she witnesses the destruction of Darwin. The artist's inclusion of the silhouette of a boab tree in the lower right corner of the painting firmly locates the place – the Kimberley.

In this painting the conjunction of the two Rainbow Serpents, Juntarkal and Wungurr, reflects the revelatory nature of Rover Thomas' getting of the Kurirr Kurirr Dreaming that brings together two distinct ancestral entities from two very different parts of the country. The painting's format, the double square, relates to the shape of many of the painted boards carried across the shoulders by participants in the Kurirr Kurirr rituals.

Sotheby's wishes to thank Kim Akerman for his assistance with this entry.