Billy Thomas Joongoorra

(circa 1920-2012)

Waringarri at Warla, 2003

Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
Purchased from Red Rock Art, Kununurra, Western Australia in September 2003
The Laverty Collection, Sydney

This painting is sold with accompanying Red Rock Art documentation.

BILLY THOMAS JOONGOORRA
When Billy Thomas's days as a stockman were
over, he took to depicting his customary lands
in the Great Sandy Desert and developed a
distinctive style of painting that both reveals
and conceals. His works are characterised
by the fluidity with which he draws the
conventional icons of desert art only to bury
these in swirls of sumptuous paint, usually
white. Conceptually sophisticated, the process
consists of continual mark-making and erasure
that reflects the boundaries between public
or open interpretations of the painting and
that which is privileged and restricted to the
ceremonial context.
The painting relates to the regular gatherings
(waringarri) of members of the various language
groups of the Kimberley for ceremony and law
at Waarlla. The word 'waringarri' in the title of
the work is a Miriwoong word meaning 'coming
together'. These gatherings bring together
people from the eastern Kimberley and the
Great Sandy Desert, and involve members of
the Miriwoong, Gija, Wangkajunga, Walmajarri
and other regional groups, each represented
by a curvilinear form that also describes a
topographic feature. Waarlla is a sacred site in
the Great Sandy Desert, south-west of Balgo,
which the artist described as 'flat like an airport'.
It consists of hundred of waterholes which
form a lake after heavy rains. Waarlla is also an
important burial ground.

Wally Caruana