Design and Art Australia Online

Regina Wilson was born in 1948 at Wudikapildyerr, 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 Ngangikurrungurr 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, and stems directly from her skills as a master weaver. After attending the Contemporary Art Biennale (Pacific Arts Festival) in 2000, Wilson decided to try acrylic painting.

Regina experimented with various techniques and designs during art workshops in 2001, orchestrated by Darwin gallerist Karen Brown. During this time, she started to transfer her weaving designs and patterns onto the canvas, including syaw (fish-nets), wupun (basket), dilly string bags, wall mats and sun mats.

Wilson won the General Painting category of the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2003 for a golden syaw painting.
Wilson also celebrates the cultural significance of message sticks – a traditional form of communication between communities – in her paintings and transposes their densely textured qualities onto the canvas.

This is her story of the message stick (with assistance by Peppimenarti resident 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) is also explored by Regina.
Regina has produced silk screen prints (2002 and 2008) and etchings (2008) with Red Hand and Basil Hall Editions. Examples of Regina’s work are held in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, the Colin and Elizabeth Laverty collection, The Kaplan-Levi Collection and many other significant corporate and private collections.

Regina has been represented by Karen Brown Gallery (2001-04), Agathon Gallery (2005-06) and Caruana Reid (2008).
Her work has been included in many group exhibitions at public and private art institutions, including the Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2008) and 'Dreaming their Way: Australian Aboriginal Women Painters’ at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC (2006).
Regina was instrumental in establishing the art centre Durrmu Arts at Peppimenarti in 2007. She lives at Peppimenarti with her three sons, three daughters, two sisters (artists Mabel Jimarin and Margaret Kundu) and her many grandchildren.

Writers:

Durrmu Arts

Date written:

2008

Last updated:

2011