Rover Thomas is widely regarded as the central figure in the development of the painting movement that emerged in the eastern Kimberley during the 1980s, although he was not the first major artist from the region to work in a modern context. Bungullgi was created between 1986 and 1991, a period when Thomas was producing some of his strongest work. At that time, his paintings were being sold through his official representatives: the late Mary Macha—who was instrumental in launching his career—and the government-supported Waringarri Arts centre in Kununurra. 

Bungullgi is a fine example of Rover Thomas' artistic genius. It is one of many paintings by the artist where he interprets the landscape of the eastern Kimberley as a palimpsest of ancestral creative activity and physical geography, coupled with his personal experience of place. It bears the hallmarks of the artist's best work; sureness of hand, subtlety of colour, original compositional format and his unique sense of touch in the application of paint. 

Bungullgi is depicted in the smoky late afternoon light. Painted on the cusp of Rover Thomas’s greatest works, in the middle of his best period, 1987-91…In Bungullgi Thomas has made the Ragged Range the ostensible landscape subject but we are not seeing a view, en plain air, but rather a recollection constructed of the salient elements of geography, history, and story, arranged to reveal what lies within the order of things. Bungullgi is a multivalent place encompassing all. 

-Text from Dr Suzanne Spunner