Bob Gibson
Bob enjoys telling the stories from his father’s country around Patjarr and his mother’s Kulkurta. He paints about two snakes and two men who travelled north to Karrkurinkitja. As the party travelled, some strangers came up behind them and the snakes fled. Then Kurningka (boss of the Tingari men) went looking. The clouds were coming towards them. The snakes were travelling fast and the water was rising, and the lady snake went in the ant’s hole but the other snake was left outside. Kurningka was saying, ‘water is coming closer’ but the other snake was too big for the hole. The Kurningka cut the snake and a lot of fat came out.”
— Tjarlirli Art
Bob Gibson Tjungurrayi was born at Papunya in 1974, before moving with his family to the small community of Tjukurla during the outstation movement of the 1980s.
This was a time when many Ngaanyatjarra people moved from government outposts near to Alice Springs back into the Western Desert to be closer to their ancestral homelands.
Bob’s mother, Mary Gibson, is also a leading Tjarlirli artist whose Country is at Kulkurta, deep in the Western Desert, while his father’s country was near Patjarr on the edge of the Gibson Desert Nature Reserve.
Bob began painting with Tjarlirli Art in 2007, and quickly found a unique rhythm and approach to mark-making; his style is characterised by bold colours and an inimitable freedom of movement, expressing ancient stories with contemporary flair.
Looking at a Bob Gibson painting feels a little like spending time with the artist himself. Bob’s bold, playful presence in the studio is contagious; each canvas brings wild shapes and expressive lines met with decisive mark-making and confident realisation of country.
His highly unique representations of tjukurrpa (dreaming stories) are an intersection of traditional storytelling and a spirited contemporary artistic practice. Bob’s work is significant for the way it speaks to the complex layers and tensions between cultural, historical and modern influences, and challenges characterisations of what ‘real’ Aboriginal art looks like.
