Jimmy Pike Jilji and Jimu
JIMMY PIKE (Australian, c. 1940 - 2002)
Jilji and Jimmu , 1988 Screen-print (linocut), Ed’n: 15 of 95 50.9cm x 67.6cm (sheet) 34.0cm x 44.5cm (image) Acquired 1998 #Inventory/Catalogue No.111928 |
Biography:
Jimmy Pike was part of the great exodus of desert people in the 1940s and 1950s who moved into the cattle country of the Kimberley, working on cattle stations along the Fitzroy River area. The influx of desert people bought elements of renewed cultural life to the diverse groups along the Fitzroy, and stories were shared as part of an extended kinship and identification with lands now removed from daily life.
Jimmy Pike had a direct graphic style of telling traditional stories and his appeal was widespread from the time he began exhibiting in Fremantle in 1982.
A series of linocuts and silkscreen prints by the artist gained him national exposure, and subsequent exhibitions of paintings and prints added to his reputation. His works were exhibited in Tokyo, London, Berlin, Beijing and toured in USA.
Jimmy Pike introduced vivid colour into his work when most high profile Aboriginal desert artists were painting with the earth colours that were dominant in the early 1980s. Some of this colour was introduced by Pike’s love of texta colour ink pens that gave an instantaneous colour aura to all his drawings.
Much of Jimmy Pike’s work seemed to concentrate on this aura of power that surrounded the stories and places that were at the centre of Walmajarri culture. He would include figurative elements, often quite simply drawn, then imbue them with the radiance that suggested their deep underlying power.
Jimmy Pike is well represented in books and co-authored many stories with his wife Pat Lowe, giving further accounts of traditional life in the desert.
The artist is well represented in the collections of all the major Australian public galleries and museums including National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of NSW, National Gallery of Victoria and Australian Museum.
In 1995 Jimmy Pike was honoured with a major Retrospective at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth.
Artwork
The Art Gallery of Western Australia also holds a work from this same edition.
Bibliography
Ngirramanujuwal
The Art and Country of Jimmy Pike
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS)
View:
To see more works by Jimmy Pike visit the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Art Gallery of South Australia.