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Artwork Description:
“This painting shows my Grandfather’s Country (Wili), where they used to walk around in circles searching for bush tucker and water from the waterholes. When our ancestors came out from the Canning Stock Route, they used to see big mob of sand dunes and flowers. This painting is about waterholes and the red desert sand. The different colours represent the wildflowers, the brown is the sand dunes and the circles are the waterholes.”
– Bibianna Tumbler
This artwork depicts Country in and around the Great Sandy Desert — an immense area stretching from the edges of the Kimberley near Bidyadanga and Eighty Mile Beach, east through Walyarta (Mandora Marsh) and Percival Lakes, and down toward Kulyakartu, Kunawarritji (Well 33) and the Canning Stock Route. It is a vast landscape of dunes, claypans, salt lakes and waterholes.
Category: Paintings (Oils & Acrylics)
Artwork Medium: Acrylic on canvas
122h x 76w x 5d (cm)
Artist Bio:
“I was born at La Grange at the old hospital. I grew up there and have been there all my life with my parents. I started paintng in 2015. What inspired me the most is the way the old people used to tell me stories about their Country and their families’ background. When they used to paint, they used the colours to represent the land, seas, flowers, animals and other things.”
– Bibianna Tumbler
Bibianna’s paintngs often depict her Grandfather’s Country in the Great Sandy Desert, showing red desert sands, waterholes, wildflowers, and bush foods such as kumpaja (bush nuts). Her works carry the memory of ancestors walking the desert, searching for bush tucker and water, and reflect the colours of both desert and sea. She began paintng in 2015 and continues to share the stories passed down by her Elders through her detailed use of line, colour, and circle motifs.
Her talent has been recognised across the Kimberley. In 2025, Bibianna won the Indigenous Art Award at the Shinju Art Award in Broome and the Kimberley Art and Photography Prize in Derby.
“Through storytelling and painƟng about Grandfather or Grandmother’s Country, I can help teach future generations.”
– Bibianna Tumbler
Group Exhibitions
2025, September Redbill Gallery and Studio. Broome WA Us for Country
2025, September Civic Centre, Broome WA Shinju Art Award / Winner Indigenous Art Award
2025, July Shire of Derby/West Kimberley, Derby WA Kimberley Art and Photography Prize / Winner Aboriginal
Art Award
2024, August Lawson Flats and AACHWA, Perth WA Desert Meets the Seaside
2024, July Junction & Co. The Courthouse Gallery, Port Hedland WA Jury Art Award
2023, September Civic Centre, Broome WA Shinju Art Award
2023, August Civic Centrre, Broome WA Art Above the 26th
2023, July Fremantle Art Centre, Fremantle WA Revealed Exhibition: New and Emerging WA Aboriginal Artists
2023, July Shire of Derby/West Kimberley, Derby WA Kimberley Art and Photography Prize
2022, September Civic Centre, Broome WA Shinju Art Award