Art Communities

Warmun Community is located at Turkey Creek in the East Kimberley between Halls Creek and Kununurra in far north Western Australia. It is situated on the site of the old telegraph station and was once a stop for the camel trains that moved through the North carrying provisions to stations and communities.

Many Aboriginal people were drawn to Turkey Creek, as the settlement is located central to a number of cattle stations, where many of the men and women had worked for most of their lives.

It was here in 1975 that Rover Thomas and Paddy Tjamatji began the artistic collaboration that was to become the model for contemporary Kimberley ochre painting. A ceremony was revealed to Rover Thomas through a series of dreams or visions of a spirit’s journey after death. This Dreaming formed the basis of the Kuril Kuril ceremony. The paintings illustrating the Kuril Kuril journey started the modern art movement at Turkey Creek- with a style that is simple and uncluttered, and with shapes that are defined by rows of white dots.

Warmun is Gija country, and the Gija artists there have followed the example of Rover Thomas and Paddy Tjamatji in depicting topographical maps in broad ochre areas mixed with various forms of fixative, including locally gathered gum from eucalyptus trees called bloodwoods.
Today Warmun Artists continue to create maps of particular forms in the landscape on canvas and board. These are painted in both plan and profile, and often include the roads, dams, cattle yards and creeks of the stations where the artists have worked. They are recording and mapping particular incidents in recent history, and at the same time giving mythological potency to rock formations, caves and hills in the landscape. The works thus combine two ways of “seeing”: temporal and metaphysical. The work of the Warmun artists draws on the Ngarrangkarni or Creation period, a concept referred to in many areas of Australia as the Dreaming. Warmun paintings glow in their natural ochre hues and serve to confirm the vibrancy of an ancient and evolving culture.

Churchill Cann

Gordon Barney

Ian

Jock Mosquito