Jimmy Pike Art

Jimmy Pike (c1940 – 2002) became one of Australia’s most famous Aboriginal artists during the 1990s when he exhibited widely, both paintings and limited edition prints, that told the stories of his early life in the Great Sandy Desert. He stated that “My work is painting and drawing, telling stories from the Dreamtime and about places where Dreamtime people travelled through my country. “

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.

Japingka Gallery owes the background of its name to the great desert culture shared by Jimmy Pike and fellow artists Peter Skipper and Hughie Bent. The place where Walmajarri people could come together in the wet season, there being enough water and food sources after rain to support the extended group of nomadic hunters, was an important cultural site. The senior men shared this name with the art gallery that showed their work over several decades.

Japingka Gallery has exhibited and coordinated exhibitions of Jimmy Pike’s work over many years including a solo exhibition in 2000, and more recently included in the 2013 exhibition Landmarks and Law Grounds: Men of the Desert. A selection of paintings and prints by Jimmy Pike is available from Japingka Gallery, where collectors can buy Aboriginal art online with certainty of quality, authenticity and provenance of art works. Aboriginal art status – Highly collectable artist.

Solo Exhibitions

1985 Aboriginal Artists Gallery, Melbourne
1986 Aboriginal Artists Gallery, Sydney
1986 Black Swan Gallery, Fremantle
1987 Ben Grady Gallery, Canberra
1987 Tynte Gallery, Adelaide
1987 Craft Centre Gallery, Sydney
1987 Seibu Shibuya, Tokyo
1988 Birukmarri Gallery, Fremantle
1988 Capricorn Gallery, Port Douglas
1988 Tynte Gallery, Adelaide
1988 Blaxland Gallery, Sydney and Melbourne
1991 Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London
2000 Japingka Gallery Perth
2001 Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London

Selected Group Exhibitions

1984 His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth WA
1985 Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Praxis, Fremantle WA
1987 Print Council Gallery, Melbourne VIC
1987 Recent Aboriginal Art of WA, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra ACT
1987 The Fourth National Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition, Museum and Art Gallery of the NT, Darwin NT
1987 Galerie Exler, Frankfurt, Germany
1987 Art and Aboriginality, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth UK
1988 Addendum Gallery, Fremantle WA
1998 Australian Aboriginal Graphics from the Collection of the Flinders University Art Museum
1989 Prints by Seven Australian Aboriginal Artists, International Touring Exhibition through the Print Council and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
1990 J’ete Australien à Montpellier, Musee Fabre Gallery, Montpellier France
1990 Balance 1990, Views, Visions, Influences, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane QLD
1990 Contemporary Aboriginal Art from the Robert Holmes à Court Collection, Harvard University, University of Minnesota, Lake Oswego Centre for the Arts, USA
1990 Tagari Lia. My Family, Contemporary Aboriginal Art from Australia, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow UK
1991 Flash Pictures, National Gallery of Australia, Canberr ACT
1991 The Eighth National Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin NT
1992 Working in the Round, Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide SA
1992 Crossroads – Towards a New Reality, Aboriginal Art from Australia, National Museums of Art, Koyoto and Tokyo, Japan
1992 The Ninth National Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin NT
1992 Kimberley Creations, Broome WA
1992/3 New Tracks Old Land: An Exhibition of Contemporary Prints from Aboriginal Australia, Touring USA and Australia.
1993 The Tenth National Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin.
1993 Galerie im Vinyard Berlin Germany
1994 New Tracks Old Land Touring USA
1994 Contemporary Visions, Melbourne VIC
1994 Artmove Claremont WA
1995 Art Gallery of Western Australia, Major Retrospective, Perth WA
1996 NATSI Art Award NTMG, Darwin NT
1996 Friendship Gallery Hefei, People’s Republic of China
1997 Durack Gallery, Broome WA
1997 Fireworks Gallery, Brisbane QLD
1997 Framed Gallery, Darwin WA
1998 Rebecca Hossack Gallery London, UK
1998 Aboriginal Art: The Continuing Tradition, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra ACT
1999 National Gallery of China Beijing
1999 NATSI Art Award NTMG, Darwin NT
2013 Landmarks and Law Grounds: Men of the Desert, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2104 Pike Family, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA

Read More

Jimmy Pike Trust
AIATSIS Jimmy Pike Profile
Jimmy Pike: Remembering His Life & Art

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Jimmy Pike – Art of the Great Sandy Desert