Hubert Pareroultja: When the rain tumbles down in July with Ken McGregor

Hubert Pareroultja; When the Rain Tumbles Down in July

Text and photographs by Ken McGregor, designed and edited by Jenny Zimmer and printed and produced entirely in Australia.

Researched and comprehensively illustrated with many stunning colour plates, this eagerly-awaited monograph on Hubert Pareroultja, When the Rain Tumbles Down in July is an insightful study of the man and his art, produced in close consultation with the artist and his family.

The substantial text (which includes photographic illustrations) follows Pareroultja’s early life growing up and being schooled at the Hermannsburg Mission. McGregor then writes about Pareroultja’s family connection with the great Albert Namatjira and the development of the Hermannsburg watercolour movement. He then documents Pareroultja’s stockman days, his struggles with alcohol and the waisted years and then winning the Wynee prize for landscape painting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. We read the sadness of many tragic circumstances, including, Pareroultja being stabbed multiple times and the murders of his older brother, his younger brother and his only child.

‘Albert Namatjira is the reason non-Indigenous Australians started to recognise the work of Aboriginal artists. His paintings have become synonymous with our vision of the Australian outback, and he must be credited with pioneering contemporary Indigenous art. Hubert Pareroultja has certainly continued this strong tradition’. Ken McGregor