Paddy Bedford began his artistic career in 1998 as an initiated Gija Senior Law Man with a life-long history of painting for ceremonial practices. He became an esteemed figure in the East Kimberley painting movement.

Deep waterholes, such as Wirwirji (also known as ‘Police Hole, ‘Donkey Hole’ and ‘Tea Hole’), are important features of the Gija landscape and are often associated with the ancestral beings that created them. In this painting, Bedford has depicted a site at which stockmen historically watered livestock. By calling the work Wirwirji – Police Hole, Bedford specifically references the period from the 1880s to 1920s when police patrolled the area, which many Traditional Owners remember as the ‘killing times’.

By using an undiluted red ochre, Bedford makes specific reference to the massacres of Indigenous peoples that occurred during this era. The tinge of dusk-coloured pink also alludes to these traumatic events, which are an ongoing subject in Bedford’s practice and are etched into the memory of the Gija people as part of their ngarranggarni (ancestral narratives).