Durrmu Arts

In July, Michael Reid Northern Beaches will present a companion exhibition to our flagship Eora/Sydney gallery’s large-scale solo presentation from senior Ngan’gikurrungurr painter, master weaver and Cultural Director at Durrmu Arts Regina Pilawuk Wilson. A seminal figure in the story of Australian First Nations art, Wilson co-founded the Peppimenarti community in 1973 in the Daly River region of the Northern Territory, establishing a permanent settlement for the Ngan’gikurrungurr people and ushering in a globally significant movement in First Nations weaving and painting at Durrmu Arts.

Our exhibition celebrates this lineage with a collection of vibrant new paintings and woven works from an ascendant generation of artists now taking up Wilson’s creative mantle at Durrmu Arts, including her daughter, Anastasia Naiya Wilson and weavers Nickolette Jimarin and Donna Liddy.

Most recently named a finalist in the 2025 Sir John Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Wilson has received numerous accolades since her defining win at the 2003 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. With her syaw (fish net) paintings, the artist channels her mastery of a generations- spanning weaving tradition into canvases soaked in colour and alive with rhythmic, reverberating movement that unspools from a central axis in ribboning, linear strokes.

The artists assembled for our collaborative exhibition with Durrmu Arts carry this interdisciplinary innovation forward. By placing one of Wilson’s syaw works in conversation with paintings and woven works by the art centre’s new guard, the exhibition draws together the strands of her practice and celebrates a dynamic continuum of artistic practice and cultural knowledge across generations.

For enquiries, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au