James Wigley and the Strelley Mob: Social Realist Painting in an Aboriginal Community

ABSTRACT

James Wigley has been historicised by Australian art scholars as a social realist, but the focus of his work through the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s differed from others who were a part of this art movement. During this time, he returned again and again to join the “strike mob” who had walked off pastoral stations in the Pilbara in 1946 and become independent by mining and purchasing their own pastoral properties. The organiser of the strikers, Don McLeod, invited Wigley to help the strikers with building boats to gather pearl shell, and later to run a printing press at the school in the new settlement of Strelley, on one of their pastoral leases. During his time with the strikes, Wigley drew and painted; he would send work to Melbourne and return there to exhibit work about the Pilbara and the people who lived there. He also illustrated the schoolbooks he was printing for the Strelley Literature Centre in the late 1970s. This article argues that this significant body of work places Wigley alongside other Australian artists who spent substantial time in remote Aboriginal communities, and whose experiences shaped their art.

KEYWORDS:

• James Wigley
• Australian art
• Strelley Mob
• Pilbara
• social realism

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Barbara Hale, Sharon Hale, Bruce Thomas, Julian Wigley, Samantha Disbray, Sheridan Palmer, Vivien Johnson, Gwen and John Bucknall, Caroline Purves of Australian Galleries, Ingrid Walkley of Nomads Charitable and Educational Foundation, as well as Michael Bonner, Alana Colbert, Courtney Henry and Jessyca Hutchens of the Berndt Museum.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See, for example, Richard Haese, Rebels and Precursors: The Revolutionary Years of Australian Art (Adelaide: Allen Lane, 1981), 131, 156, 177, 231–32; and Andrew Sayers, Drawing in Australia: Drawings, Water-Colours, Pastels and Collages from the 1770s to the 1980s (Canberra: Australian National Gallery, 1989), 198, 219.

2 The social realists have been increasingly historicised alongside painters whose politics appeared less in the foreground of their art practice. These painters include Arthur Boyd, Jacqueline Hick, Sidney Nolan and John Perceval. On this subject, see Bernard Smith, “Australian Art in England,” in Antipodean Perspective: Selected Writings of Bernard Smith, ed. Rex Butler and Sheridan Palmer (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2018), 281.

3 See Sheridan Palmer, Hegel’s Owl: The Life of Bernard Smith (Sydney: Power Publications, 2016), 100, 112, 138.

4 Noel Counihan, “Art Exhibition,” Guardian, 16 July 1959; Alan McCulloch, “Imagery of James Wigley,” Herald, 8 August 1962.

5 Barbara Hale and Sharon Hale in private communication with Darren Jorgensen, 21 February 2023; Bruce Thomas in private conversation with Darren Jorgensen, 23 February 2023.

6 James Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman, sound recording, 22–23 September 1987, National Library of Australia (hereafter NLA), https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-199167683/listen/4-682.

7 Sam Fullbrook’s Delicate Beauty was at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, 2014; Racing Colours was at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, 1995. Of Fullbrook’s Pilbara paintings, The Butcher (1955), Fat Lady with Kangaroo (Pilganoora) (1954) and Portrait of Don McLeod (1954) are all in the Art Gallery of Western Australia collection. Girl with Yandy (1954) is in the collection of The University of Western Australia.

8 D. W. McLeod, How the West Was Lost: The Native Question in the Development of Western Australia (Port Hedland: self-pub., 1984); and Donald Stuart, Yandy (Melbourne: Georgian House, 1959).

9 The most comprehensive account of the strike itself is Anne Scrimgeour, On Red Earth Walking: The Pilbara Aboriginal Strike, Western Australia 1946–1949 (Clayton, VIC: Monash University Publishing, 2020). See also Max Brown, The Black Eureka (Sydney: Australasian Book Society, 1976); Jolly Read with Peter Coppin, Yandy, theatre production, directed by Rachael Maza, Black Swan Theatre Company (Perth: Octagon Theatre, 2004); Stuart, Yandy; and David Noakes and Paul Roberts, How the West Was Lost, directed by David Noakes (Port Hedland: Ronin Films, 1987). A handful of other monographs tell the story of what followed: Peter Coppin and Jolly Read, Kangkushot: The Life of Nyamal Lawman Peter Coppin (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1999); Monty Hale, We Come from the Desert, trans. Barbara Hale and Mark Clendon (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2012); and Kingsley Palmer and Clancy McKenna, Somewhere between Black and White (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1978).

10 McLeod, How the West Was Lost, 94–153.

11 The details of Wigley’s life and the circumstances of his comings and goings from Strelley are best documented in Sheridan Palmer and Jane Eckett, “James Vandeleur Wigley (1917–1999),” The Abbey Art Centre Digital Repository, University of Melbourne, 9 August 2021, https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/abbey-art-centre/items/show/978.

12 Bernard Smith, Noel Counihan: Artist and Revolutionary (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993).

13 Haese, Rebels and Precursors, 177–78.

14 See, for example, Haese, Rebels and Precursors, 156; Smith, Noel Counihan, 214, 113.

15 Smith, Noel Counihan, 171.

16 See Jennifer Phipps, “A Human, Democratic Art: Three Realist Artists 1944–1947,” Art Journal, National Gallery of Victoria, 23 May 2014, https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/a-human-democratic-art-three-realist-artists-1944-1947/.

17 See Christine Dixon and Terry Smith, Aspects of Australian Figurative Painting 1942–1962: Dreams, Fears and Desires (Sydney: Power Institute of Fine Arts, 1984); Charles Merewether, Art and Social Commitment: An End to the City of Dreams (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1984).

18 Geoffrey Dutton, White on Black: The Australian Aborigine Portrayed in Art (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1974), 62–66; Ian McLean, White Aborigines: Identity Politics in Australian Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 95.

19 Phipps, “A Human, Democratic Art”.

20 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

21 Smith, Noel Counihan, 231.

22 Sheridan Palmer, “The Abbey Art Centre, Cultural Diversity and Postnational Modernism,” School of Culture and Communication Staff Work in Progress Day, University of Melbourne, 8 December 2021.

23 Palmer, Hegel’s Owl, 138.

24 Philip Goad, “‘Austria in Australia’: Fritz and Kathe Janeba in Warrandyte,” in Bauhaus Diaspora and Beyond: Transforming Education through Art, Design and Architecture, ed. Philip Goad et al. (Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2019), 226–27.

25 Jane Eckett, “‘More than tea and sympathy’: Eva Frankfurther’s and James Wigley’s Portraits of Migrant Workers at Lyons’ Corner House, London,” presentation, School of Culture and Communication Staff Work in Progress Day, University of Melbourne, 8 December 2021.

26 Geoffrey Gray, “‘Cluttering up the department’: Ronald Berndt and the Distribution of the University of Sydney Ethnographic Collection,” reCollections 2, no. 2 (September 2007), https://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_2_no2/papers/cluttering_up_the_department#nav.

27 Gray, “Cluttering up the department’”.

28 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

29 Palmer and Eckett, “James Vandeleur Wigley (1917–1999)”.

30 Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt, A World That Was: The Yaraldi of the Murray River and the Lakes, South Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1993).

31 Berndt and Berndt, A World That Was, 281, 290.

32 Geoffrey Gray, “‘He has not followed the usual sequence’: Ronald M. Berndt’s Secrets,” Journal of Historical Biography 16 (Autumn 2014): 69.

33 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

34 Palmer and Eckett, “James Vandeleur Wigley (1917–1999)”.

35 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

36 Ronald Berndt and Catherine Berndt, End of an Era: Aboriginal Labour in the Northern Territory (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1987), 152–53; Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

37 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

38 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

39 Vic O’Connor, interview with Barbara Blackman, oral history recording, 19 and 20 August 1985, NLA, https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-196340963/listen.

40 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

41 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

42 Hale, We Come from the Desert, 63.

43 Eckett and Palmer, “James Vandeleur Wigley (1917–1999)”; Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

44 Hale, We Come from the Desert, 65.

45 Hale, We Come from the Desert, 73. Wigley would also paint people doing this work. See Hale, We Come from the Desert, 75, for Painting of Marrngu Gathering Pearl Shell. It has not been possible to obtain a good reproduction of this work for this article.

46 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

47 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

48 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

49 Some of the Pilbara work from this time also went to Moscow and was exhibited alongside other works by Australian social realists, including Counihan, O’Connor and Herbert McClintock.

50 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

51 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman. See Coppin and Read, Kangkushot.

52 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

53 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

54 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

55 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

56 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

57 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

58 Julian Wigley, interview with the authors, 10 March 2022.

59 Scrimgeour, On Red Earth Walking, 341–88.

60 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

61 Gwen Bucknall and John Bucknall, interview with the authors, 4 March 2022.

62 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

63 Hale, We Come from the Desert, 135.

64 Bucknall and Bucknall, interview with the authors.

65 Wigley, interview with Barbara Blackman.

66 Julian Wigley, interview with the authors.

67 Bucknall and Bucknall, interview with the authors.

68 On Rex Battarbee’s time in Central Australia, see Martin Edmond, Battarbee and Namatjira (Sydney: NewSouth, 2014).

69 On more recent generations of artists who have spent extended periods in remote Aboriginal communities, see Una Rey, “Black and White Restive,” in Black and White Restive (Newcastle: Newcastle Art Gallery, 2016), 6-49. See also Kim Mahood, Position Doubtful: Mapping Landscapes and Memories (Melbourne: Scribe, 2016); Rod Moss, The Hard Light of Day: An Artist’s Story of Friendships in Arrernte Country (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2011); Marina Strocchi, “Women Painters of the Desert,” interview on RTRFM, 29 March 2019, https://www.marinastrocchi.com/news.

70 John Cruthers, Nyaparu (William) Gardiner: Outside Men (Melbourne: Vivien Anderson Gallery, 2017).

71 Bucknall and Bucknall, interview with the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council: [Grant Number DP210103825].