Painted in 2001 for Red Rock Art, Kununurra, Western Australia
Tineriba Fine Art, Adelaide
Private Collection
Sotheby's, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 24 July 2007, lot 131
Private Collection
Bonhams, Aboriginal Art; Aboriginal Art from The Superannuation Fund of William Nuttall and Annette Reeves, Sydney, 28th May 2012, lot 138
The Dennis and Debra Scholl Collection, Miami

Nevada, Nevada Museum of Art, No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting, 13 February to 13 May 2015, and additional venues:
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, 20 June to 16 August 2015
Pérez Art Museum, Miami, 17 September 2015 to 3 January 2016
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, 18 January to 15 May 2016
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, New York, 9 June to 14 August 2016

Henry F. Skerritt, ed. et al, No Boundaries: Australian Aboriginal Contemporary Abstract Painting, Prestel Verlag, Munich-London-New York, 2014, p.9 (illus. detail), p.106, p.117 (illus.)
Ian W. McLean, Rattling Spears: A History of Indigenous Australian Art, Reaktion Books, London, 2016, p.171, p.172 (illus.)

Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, on stretcher, unframed. Bears Red Rock Art catalogue number KP1312 on reverse. Please note there are two dirt markings approximately 2cm long and 1cm long and 2mm wide on pigment near upper centre margin, probably contemporary with the creation of the work. Otherwise the work is in excellent condition overall with no visible evidence of repair or restoration.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Kangaroo and Spear Dreaming, 2001, features the constant interplay between revelation and erasure that is characteristic of Billy Thomas’s paintings. The composition is set out as in a ritual sand painting and the ordered placement of different family or kin groups on the ceremonial ground. Sets of concentric circles denoting place, waterholes and ground designs are linked by lines that depict the journeys taken by the ancestors between these sites in the conventional pictorial structure of the desert. Thomas has obliterated and washed over sections of the composition, only to re-apply specific motifs in some areas. Elsewhere, the original painted designs remain intact. The site is Waarlla in the Great Sandy Desert that the artist describes as being ‘flat like an airport’. For a related and comparable work painted in the same year see Three Wangkatjunga Law Men in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia in Cumpston, N, with B. Patton, Desert Country, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2010, p.99. This painting was originally sold with an accompanying Red Rock Art certificate that read: 'This work refers to a ceremony performed prior to a kangaroo hunt, it is held by a place called Warla in the great sandy deserts where there are many water holes and is described by the artist as "flat like an airport". During the "dry" time rock kangaroos were hunting with spears (shown as straight lines connecting the circular shapes, rockholes).'

WC