Regina Pilawuk Wilson, a Ngan’gikurrungurr woman, was born in 1948 in the Daly River region of the Northern Territory.
Together with her husband, Harold Wilson, Regina founded the Peppimenarti (meaning ‘large rock’) Community as a permanent settlement for the Ngan’gikurrungurr people in the Daly River region, south west of Darwin in 1973. The location of the community is an important dreaming site for the Ngangikurrungurr language group and is situated amid wetlands and floodplains at the centre of the Daly River Aboriginal Reserve, 250 kilometres south-west of Darwin.
The subject matter of Regina’s works is based around the practice of weaving fibre art – skills she inherited from her grandmother and mother.
After attending the Contemporary Art Biennale (Pacific Arts Festival) in 2000, Regina decided to try acrylic painting.
Regina experimented with various techniques and designs during workshops held by the Darwin gallerist Karen Brown. During this time, she started to transfer her weaving designs and patterns into canvas, including syaw (fish-net), wupun (basket), string bags, wall mats and sun mats.
Regina won the General Painting category of the Telstra National Indigenous and Torres-Strait Islander Award in 2003 for a golden syaw (fish-net) painting.
Wilson also celebrates the cultural significance of ‘message sticks’ in her paintings– a traditional form of communication between communities – and transposes their densely textured qualities onto the canvas.
This is her story of the message stick (with assistance by Peppimenarti elder Captain Wodij):
When we were young we used to live at Daly River and his mob used to live at Uban, near Timber Creek.
There was no road, no anything.
They used to carry message sticks
They used to come to Daly River from Uban.
For weeks they used to travel.
They carried message sticks to remember how many days they travel to that certain place.
It was like first Aboriginal education… just to remember how many days to travel from a certain place to Daly.
They used to travel from here to Beswick too.
Even in flood waters.
They used to swim creeks and rivers to get to a place for ceremony.
This was before WWII.
They were really young men. I remember they used to come.
When the war started they moved back to Uban.
They used to walk long way, no motor car.
They used to join up at Moyle River to fight different clans.
They used to swim in the sea, no boat and less crocodiles.
Also by bringing the message stick they would bring people back with them… they would all walk together, sometimes for one year. Sometimes stay in one place for camp: big mob food, turtle, yam, fish.
They would walk slowly, those old people.
And children too, and babies. They’d have the babies half way. We used to have bush nurses who would cut the cord with a mussel shell.
They used to take message stick to boss man of a language group. If Boss says yes, they’d all move.
If a mob went to another country for burning grass, the leader would get angry and a message stick would follow. Then there would be war.
If a man went off with message stick and didn’t return, they think big trouble. A different clan would go and steal another man’s wife.
Message stick is for war and ceremony and things like that.
That message stick means a lot.
The subject of durrmu (body painting dot) has more recently been explored by Regina.
Regina has produced silk screen prints (2001, 2007) and etchings (2007, 2009) with Red Hand and Basil Hall Editions.
Examples of Regina’s work are held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, The National Gallery of Victoria, The Gallery of Modern Art (Queensland Art Gallery), The British Museum and numerous private and corporate collections in Australia and overseas.
Her paintings have been included in many group exhibitions at public and private art institutions, including the 3rd Moscow Biennale of Art, the Wynne Prize (2008 and 2009), AGNSW, and Dreaming Their Way: Australian Aboriginal Women Painters at the National Museum of the Arts, Washington.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2010 Shalom Gamarada, Shalom College, University of New South Wales
2010 Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, Darwin
2010 Important Aboriginal Art, Caruana & Reid Fine Art, Sydney
2010 Prints and Pandanus, Nomad Art, Darwin
2010 Tunbridge Gallery, Margaret River
2009 3rd Moscow Biennale of Art, Moscow, Russia
2009 Floating Life: Contemporary Aboriginal Fibre Art, Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland Art Gallery
2009 Yewirr, Raft Artspace, Darwin
2009 Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, Darwin
2009 Country Culture Community, Art Gallery of New South Wales
2009 Wynne Prize
2009 Southern Exchange, Hong Kong
2009 Shalom Gamarada, Shalom College, University of New South Wales
2008 Telstra National Indigenous and Torres-Strait Islander Award
2008 Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, Darwin
2008 Shalom Gamarada, Shalom College, University of New South Wales
2008 Important Aboriginal Art, Caruana Reid, Sydney
2008 The Sum of Us, Michael Reid, Sydney
2008 Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales
2008 Ancient Culture. Modern Art, Club 21 Gallery, Four Seasons Hotel, Singapore
2007 Peppimenarti, Chalk Horse Gallery, Sydney
2007 Peppimenarti Open Day
2006 Western Desert and Beyond at the Central Tafe Art Gallery, Perth, Western Australia
2006 Deadly: Campbelltown Art Centre’s Aboriginal and Torres-Strait Islander Collection, Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest
2006 My Country, Noosa Blue Resort, Queensland, part of the Indigenous Art Feast, Noosa Longweekend
2006 Dreaming their Way: Australian Aboriginal Women Painters at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC
2005 Shalom Gamarada Art Exhibition, Shalom College, University of New South Wales
2005 North by North-West: Contemporary Indigenous Art from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection, Art Gallery of Queensland
2004 Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award: Celebrating 20 Years, Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory & traveling exhibition
2004 Peppimenarti, Sherman Galleries, Sydney
2003 Peppimenarti, Karen Brown Gallery, Darwin
2003 Colour Country, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Queensland
2000 Contemporary Art Biennale in Noumea, staged as part of the Pacific Arts Festival
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2008 New Works, Caruana Reid Fine Art at Michael Reid, Sydney
2008 New Works, Santa Monica Art Studios, LA
2006 New Works, Agathon Gallery, Melbourne
2005 New Works, Agathon Gallery, Sydney
2004 New Works, Karen Brown Gallery, Darwin
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
The British Museum, UK
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Queensland Art Gallery
National Gallery of Victoria
Campbelltown Arts Centre
Levi-Kaplan Collection, Seattle, WA, USA
Colin and Elizabeth Laverty Collection, Sydney
Grant Samuel Collection, Sydney
Fife Capital Collection, Sydney
Barrie & Jude Lepley Collection, Perth
Parliament House Collection, Canberra
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS / MEDIA
Fesq, Harriet, catalogue entry, 3rd Moscow Biennale of Art, 2009
Moon, Diane, Floating Life: Contemporary Aboriginal Fibre Art, Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland Art Gallery, 2009
McCulloch, Susan, ‘Profile: Durrmu Arts’, Australian Aboriginal Art Magazine, Issue 1, 2009
Caruana, Wally, ‘New Work: Regina Wilson’, Art World, Issue 7, Dec/Jan 2008/09
McCulloch, Emily, New Beginnings: Classic Paintings from the Corrigan Collection of 21st Century Aboriginal Art, McCulloch and McCulloch Australian Art Books, 2008
Dodson, Mick, et al, Etched in the Sun: prints made by Indigenous artists in collaboration with Basil Hall and printers, 1997 – 2007, exhibition catalogue, ANU Drill Hall Gallery, 2008
Laverty, Colin and Elizabeth (eds)., Beyond Sacred: Recent Paintings from Australia’s Remote Aboriginal Communities, Hardie Grant, Melbourne, 2008
Rothwell, Nicholas, ‘Ancient and Modern’, Spectrum, Sydney Morning Herald, May 31- June 1, 2008
McDonald, John, ‘Natural order of farce restored’, Spectrum, Sydney Morning Herald, March 15-16, 2008
Smith, Matthew, ‘Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Artists Dazzle’, Australian Art Review, September 2007
McDonald, John, Studio: Australian Painters on the Nature of Creativity, 2007
Konau, Britta, Dreaming their Way: Australian Aboriginal Women Painters, 2006
McCulloch, Susan et al, McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art, 2006
McDonald, John, ‘Living canvases blossom abroad’, Sydney Morning Herald, July 8th, 2006
McDonald, John, ‘Guiding Light: The year in visual arts’, Sydney Morning Herald, Dec 23rd, 2005
McLaughlin, Murray, ‘Aboriginal art bringing money to NT’, 7.30 Report, ABC TV, 2nd June, 2003
AWARDS
2009 Finalist, Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales
2008 Finalist, Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales
2008 Finalist, Telstra National Indigenous and Torres-Strait Islander Award
2003 General Painting, Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award