JEREMY ECCLES provides a vivid and insightful background to a recent exhibition of works at Caruana & Reid Gallery in Sydney.

Those Gija lawmen of the East Kimberley have surely proved themselves the most resolute of Australia’s northern tribesmen. For, faced with a twentieth century in which white pastoralists assumed the right to steal their land, ruthlessly kill any who showed the slightest spark of opposition, then throw off their lands those stockmen who expected equal pay after the 1967 Referendum, the Gija quietly withstood all the blows and then rebuilt their culture around a painting movement.

And in this act of sharing with the old enemy — now art buyers — they also resisted the influence of many other Aborigines pressing north from the deserts into the kinder Kimberley. While Aboriginal art just a little further south in Balgo, and then from Fitzroy across to Broome, shows strong Desert influences in its colour, perspective and dotting, the Gija drew a line in the sand and developed their own unique style.

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Image: Rusty Peters, Sugarleaf Dreaming, 2008, ochres, pigment with acrylic binder on Belgian linen, 80 x 240cm.