JACK NAWILIL

Mayali and Rembarrnga artist Kamarrang Jack Nawilil is a senior member of the Balngarra clan, who lives and works at Bolkjdam, an outstation located near Maningrida community in central Arnhem Land. A song man and cultural leader, he works across painting on bark, carved sculpture and ceremonial objects such as mularra (morning star poles), mako (didgeridoo), lorrkkon (hollow logs) and his unique spirit poles – made from paperbark, feathers, native beeswax and handspun bark fibre string.

Common subjects of his work include representations of significant spirit beings, such as wyarra (skeleton), wurum (fish-increasing) and namorrodo (profane) spirits, and important ancestors, including the female creator ancestor Ngalkodjek who travelled from Elcho Island in the East.

The narratives represented in Nawilil’s artworks are extremely complex and often antithetical to Western knowledge systems. His artworks reference and manifest multiple places, clans and events that span vast distances and timeframes. To audiences who are not initiated and socialised in bininj (Aboriginal) cultural practices and history, the true and complete meanings of these artworks cannot be fully grasped. His artworks challenge the viewer to grapple with a different way of being in, and understanding, the world.

Nawilil won the Wandjuk Marika 3D Award of the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2012, for a spirit pole representing the story of Namorrodddo and made from paperbark, handmade bush string, pigments, beeswax and feathers

American collector and donor, the late Will Owen who wrote a well-read blog entitled Australian Aboriginal Art & Culture: An American Eye described Nawilil’s winning work:

“The winning work has the same sense or aura of an almost unmediated ceremonial object, the roughness of its wrapped and painted surfaces an index of the spirit’s strength. Namorroddo, associated with the shooting star is a fearful presence in the night and it takes a powerful medicine man to protect against him. Any object that appears in the NATSIAA is obviously an object of engagement with the marketplace, but Nawilil’s sculpture seem to arrive at the agora straight from some place very deep in the bush and the psyche; powerful and primal, Namorroddo is a simple and disturbing creation.”

Jack Nawilil’s work is held in public and private collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. He has exhibited with leading private galleries around Australia and overseas for nearly four decades.