Description

Details

• Medium: Screen print
• Size: 420 x 590 mm (image) and 670 x 800 mm (paper)
• Paper: n/a
• Edition: 95
• Published: c1989
• Studio: Desert Prints Fremantle

NB: The actual colour is slightly deeper and more fluoro than it appears in the photograph

Subject

TBC

Jimmy Pike Biography

Jimmy Pike was born near Jila Japingka a major waterhole around 400 kilometres south of Fitzroy Crossing in the Great Sandy Desert. Jila are desert soaks that never dry out. The word ‘jila’ is often translated by desert people as ‘living water’, indicating the importance of these sites.

Jimmy Pike first explored felt-pen drawing and linocut printing in the early 1980s. As an inmate at Fremantle Prison, Pike attended art classes organised by Stephen Culley and David Wroth, who would later establish Desert Designs and become collaborators.

Jila Japingka is a significant subject in Pike’s artwork and appears in many prints and drawings, including some of his earliest prints. Pike also created artworks depicting the spirit who lives at Japingka.

In 1986 Jimmy Pike was released on parole to a desert camp with members of his family at Kurlku on the edge of his country in the Great Sandy Desert. That same year Pat Lowe, a British born psychologist who had met Pike in Broome Prison in the late 1970s, joined the artist at Kurlku as his partner and collaborator.

From 1990, until Pike passed away in 2002, the couple were based in Broome, from where they could both visit the desert and travel internationally to attend exhibitions of Pike’s art.

Acknowledgement: AIATSIS

Pike had 14 solo exhibitions between 1985 and 2001 and participated in many more group exhibitions. His works are held in collections all over the world.