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Daluk Ngagodjek

The following information comes from an interview with Jack Nawilil transcribed by linguists Murray Garde and Margaret Carew in December 2017. 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 the local practices and history, the true and complete meaning 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.

This one here [ceremonial object], I have drawn my own personal designs on it. This represents a woman, she travelled a long way, all the way from Elcho Island. This ceremonial object is one of the women, her name is Ngalkodjek. She came this way, to the west from north-east Arnhem Land. She has many things: kunkaninj (digging stick) that she walked with across the land, and kunmadj (dilly bags). She named and created the country as she walked.

Categories: Maningrida Arts & Culture

Name: Jack Yurrulbbirri Nawilil

Language: Rembarrnga, Mayali

Community: Maningrida

Biography:

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 body adornments using feathers, native beeswax and hand-spun 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’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 commercial galleries around Australia and overseas for nearly four decades.

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