Regina Pilawuk Wilson
AUSTRALIAN. NGAN’GIKURRUNGURR, B. 1948
“In the old days, me, my sisters and my mother used to sit and weave together. All the women at Daly used to weave. And some men. Our grandfather used to make really big fishnets, but when the missionaries arrived they told the Aboriginal people not to make them any more —so we lost that stitch” —REGINA PILAWUK WILSON”
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 Ngan’gikurrungurr language group and is situated amid wetlands and floodplains at the centre of the Daly River Aboriginal Reserve, 300 kilometers south-west of Darwin.
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.
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. Regina is currently touring the USA & Canada in the landmark exhibit Marking the Infinite.
Regina is a Cultural Support Officer with Durrmu Arts, and has been instrumental in the art centre’s establishment and continued strength and success.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
The British Museum, UK
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Queensland Art Gallery
National Gallery of Victoria
Levi-Kaplan Collection, Seattle, WA, USA
Debra & Dennis Scholl Collection, USA
Colin and Elizabeth Laverty Collection, Sydney
Parliament House Collection, Canberra
KUNSTWERK, Alison and Peter W. Klein Collection, Germany