BOXER MILNER - WINDJAREE
BOXER MILNER
WINDJAREE, 2000
120 x 80 cm
Synthetic Polymer Paint on Belgian Linen
REGION
Balgo Hills, WA
PROVENANCE
Warlayirti Artists, Balgo Hills, WA
Kimberly Art, VIC
STORY
Born at Milnga-Milnga, south-west of Billiluna near Sturt Creek, Boxer was one of a small number of artists who came from the transition zone between the desert and the river country in Tjaru land. Here, the country and vegetation move from flat and featureless rolling Spinifex plains to flood plains with enormous river channels and permanent waterholes. The yearly cycles of flood and dry create swamps with abundant bird life, through which runs Purkitji, or Sturt Creek.
It is the intimate knowledge of all the facets of the river system as a traditional owner of Purkitji, which informed the majority of Boxer’s paintings and his unique aesthetic.
In Boxer’s paintings, floodwaters are coloured by the white silt of the surrounding clay country. This is the ‘milk water’, which provides a geometric grid against which the rest of the landscape is represented. His motifs refer to the miraculous transformations in the land and sky as new life seeps into the flat lands; of the passage of water and the changing coloured tides; and the mythological drama associated with the sight and sound of thunder, lightning, rain, and brilliant rainbows. Colour changes represent the trees and vegetation, the red and white stones, the black soil, the myriad channels and tributaries, the hills and the contours that define the artist’s home. All this is contained within the dot and line work that surrounds the inescapable forms and patterns that Boxer Milner employed to portray Purkitji.
This painting depicts some powerful stories for Boxer's traditional country along the middle stretches of Sturt Creek. This country Windjaree or billabongs which fill during the wet season floods and rains. Show here are six billabongs, which art from the bottom left, Poonai, Timaroo, Porrongorr, Mungal, Munegarn and Worlumorloong.
EXHIBITED
Painting Words, December 2022, Cooee Art | Redfern
ARTIST PROFILE
