William King Jungala | 'Fire, 2005' | 120x180cm

Code: DDWK05071

Artist: William King Jungala

Title: Fire

Area: Darwin / Katherine, NT

Community: Gurindji

Medium: Acrylic On Linen

Size: 120x180cm

Year: 2005

Heat lifts off the canvas. William King Jungala builds Fire from countless fine dots, letting molten reds, deep crimsons and bright yellows roll across the surface like flame moving through spinifex country.

The composition reads as burning Country seen from above. Pockets of darker red hold the slow smoulder. Golden filaments trace the leading edge of the fire, where flame meets fuel and the ground changes colour in an instant. Nothing here is still. The dotwork breathes with the kind of movement anyone who has watched a bushfire will recognise.

Fire is a working part of life on Gurindji Country. It clears, renews and shapes the land. Jungala painted it with respect for that cycle, not as destruction but as a force that belongs to the ground itself.

Jungala was a Gurindji man whose people led the Wave Hill Walk-Off, the action that opened the way for Australian land rights. That history of standing with Country runs quietly through his practice. He worked independently, developing a dot technique that favoured atmosphere over diagram, mood over map.

His daughters Sarrita and Tarisse King learned their craft at his side and carry his approach forward in their own well known paintings. Works by Jungala himself are increasingly uncommon. He died in 2007, and each surviving canvas is a direct link to the source of a now celebrated family style.

Fire is a large and confident example of that source. Stand close and the dots dissolve into pure heat. Step back and the whole field ignites.