Regina Pilawuk Wilson

Painted in Peppimenarti for Durrmu Arts, West Daly River region, Northern Territory (catalogue number 237-19)

Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney

Acquired from the above by the present owner with the assistance of Tim Klingender Fine Art in 2019

Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney, Deme Ngayi Napa Pupunyi – I made these mats with my hands, September 26 - October 16, 2019

An elder of the Ngan’gikurrungurr people in the township of Peppimenarti, southwest of Darwin in the Northern Territory, Regina Piluwak Wilson is an expert weaver of syaw, traditional fishing nets, wupun, known as sun mats, and string bags made from yerrgi (pandanus) and merrepen (sand palm). After attending the Pacific Arts Festival in Noumea, New Caledonia in 2000, Wilson was inspired to try painting in acrylics. She adopted the medium to transfer her knowledge of traditional ceremonial body designs, sand drawings and weaving patterns into paint on canvas. Her mark making reinterprets a variety of stitches of her weavings, rendering the rhythms of the weaver’s hand in two dimensions to create works of intense luminosity, and which, as in Wupun (Sun Mat), 2019, draw the viewer into the picture plane.

Wilson’s paintings have been shown in a number of international exhibitions including three in the United States: Dreaming Their Way: Australian Aboriginal Women Painters, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. in 2006; Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia, at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge MA, in 2016; and Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia that toured the United States and Canada from 2016 to 2019.