William King Jungala | 'Desert Images, 2005' | 120x180cm

Code: DDWK05150

Artist: William King Jungala

Title: Desert Images

Area: Katherine, NT

Community: Gurindji

Medium: Acrylic On Canvas

Size: 120x180cm

Year: 2005

William King Jungala painted Country as a series of strata. Earth, sand, water and stone read horizontally across the canvas, banded like a cross section of the land he knew. The desert is shown as something layered and alive, holding memory in every seam.

Look closely and the bands shift. Ochre reds give way to deep umber, mustard yellow runs beside fine white dotting that suggests dry grasses or salt. A thin gold line traces its way through the middle of the work like a watercourse finding its path. Where the strata buckle and rise, you can sense ridges, dunes and the slow lift of country underfoot.

The dotted bead lines that punctuate the composition act as journey markers. They run east to west, the way songlines and travel routes carry people across the desert. Jungala was Gurindji, from the people whose Wave Hill Walk Off changed the course of Australian land rights. His paintings carry that consciousness of belonging to land, of land belonging to people.

His daughters Sarrita and Tarisse King learned to paint at his side and still work in the visual language he developed. You can see the seed of their horizon paintings here. The patient stippling. The respect for the simple line of the land. The willingness to let a single band of colour carry an entire stretch of country.

Jungala died young, in 2007, and works of this scale and confidence from his hand are increasingly hard to find. Desert Images stands as a quiet, considered map of the place he came from.