The West Macdonnell Ranges unfurl like ancient, woven ribbons through the Central Desert, stretching towards the setting sun in the west. Every time I travel through the ridgelines, I think of the enormity of time that has passed over the crumbling rockface. My mind drifts to the people and the creation spirits of past and present that have inhabited this place for millennia.

There is a spot where I like to stop and look over a particularly broken line of rocks as it snakes into the distance. The view reminds me of Hadrian’s Wall—built two thousand years ago by the Roman Emperor to keep the Picts tribes from invading the Roman province of Britannia. Looking at this naturally deconstructed landscape, I can’t help but reflect on the fragility of man, and of empire. How this place has been home to the Arrente people for tens of thousands of years; before that Northern Roman wall was built—how the people lived and thrived without any need for the rest of the world.

The landscape changes throughout the day; dark violets through to crimson reds giving way to a silver sheen as the afternoon light bounces off the rock face. It is this landscape that has informed the life of Hubert Pareroultja. A topography omnipresent in his mind and in his painting. He grew up in a one room, earthen-floored house on the plains just past the mountains—water came via a forty-four-gallon drum rolled to the house from a bore a couple kilometres away.

The vastness of the country, and his connection to it, is not a myth. It is absolute. His belief in the country is drawn from a time before time existed. His interrogation of the landscape has its genesis in the last century when his father and uncles painted with Albert Namitjirra. It is this visual lineage that imbues Pareroultja’s contemporary works. Seemingly, he knows every inch of the red earth; the button grass and the eponyms ghost gums that live large in our collective consciousness intrinsic to how we think about the desert country.

"When the rain tumbles down in July" gives reverence to the history of the artists that started the movement that would capture the imagination of the world. And yet the physicality goes further—these paintings will stand the test of time. A vastness that reflects the place that they are born from. And just like that old wall on the other side of the word—people will no doubt ponder on their immensity for centuries to come.

Ralph Hobbs
March, 2024