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Phyllis Thomas – Booljoonngali – Nakarra (c. 1940) Phyllis Thomas' is a Gija woman of Nakarra skin whose bush name, Booljoonngali, means 'big rain coming down with lots of wind'. She was born at a place called Riya on the Turner River, south east of the Bungle-Bungles. When young she worked on Turner Station looking after poultry, gardening, grinding salt and carting water from the well but often preferred to go bush with the old women. She loved walking all over the country with her mother's mother and the other old women, hunting, collecting dingo scalps and looking for gold. She married Joe Thomas from Rugun, Crocodile Hole and lived there for many years. She began painting when Freddie Timms established Jirrawun Arts there. Phyllis’s work depicting Dreaming places and bush tucker from the Crocodile Hole area as well as the country around the middle reaches of the Ord and Turner rivers where she was born, achieved immediate success. She was represented in the Telstra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award exhibition in 1999 with a stunning picture Boornbem Goorlem, Hot Water Spring II painted with black and a pinkish red colour depicts the spring in a gorge with the open sky shown as a plain expanse of paint above the water and rock faces. Other works include Bush Honey - ‘Sugarbag’ Dreaming at Dry Swamp in which the dark cells of the hives float on a plain ground, and Loomoogool Blue Tongue Lizard Dreaming in which a prominent landscape feature is seen in profile. Her work has been acquired by a number of collectors and galleries including the acquisition of five paintings by the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2000. The painting 'The Escape' was painted as part of a series of paintings by Jirrawun artists relating to massacre stories which were intended to be shown together in an exhibition entitled Blood on the Spinifex. Prior to this the painting was exhibited at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2000 and was highly commended. It was acquired for the MAGNT collection. An image of this painting was used as the poster and catalogue cover for the exhibition Blood on the Spinifex held at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne between December 2002 and March 2003. An eight panel series on the same subject was shown at Raft Artspace in Darwin in April 2002 and was acquired for its collection by the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2003. Phyllis is also a singer and dancer with the Neminuwarlin Performance Group and performed in its production of Fire, Fire Burning Bright which premiered at the Perth International Arts Festival in February 2002 and opened the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts at the State Theatre in October 2002. She sings the haunting Warnalirri with Peggy Patrick on the second half of the group’s CD released in 2002 during PIAF. In June 2006 Phyllis Thomas travelled to Sydney for the Women’s Business exhibition at Sherman Galleries where she exhibited paintings based on Gemerre (cicatrices), scars that people receive as part of their induction into Aboriginal Law. Phyllis danced with the Neminuwarlin Performance Group at the opening of the Paddy Bedford exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in May 2007. © Phyllis Thomas and Jirrawun Arts Exhibitions 2006 Womens
Business - Sherman Galleries, Sydney 2005 Jirrawun in the House: A Contemporary Experience from the East Kimberley - Parliament House, Canberra 2003 Jirrawun Jazz - Raft Artspace, Darwin 2002 The
Escape - Raft Artspace, Darwin 2000 The Seventeenth National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award Exhibition - Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin 1999 My
Country - Northern Territory University Gallery, Darwin
NT
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