ROSELLA NAMOK - RED CEDAR
ROSELLA NAMOK
RED CEDAR, 2015
109 x 86 cm
Synthetic Polymer Paint on Canvas
REGION
Lockhart River, QLD
PROVENANCE
Fireworks, QLD
Cooee Art Leven, NSW
STORY
Rosella Namok describes herself as a ‘modern artist’. Her painting engages traditional themes but she explores them in her own distinctive style, bearing the markers of a modern sensibility. The ‘culture and stories’ of which Namok paints revolve loosely around several narratives. They are stories of her social and physical or natural environment featuring events such as hunting and fishing expeditions, weather patterns of rain and wind, or the stories of Kapay and Kuyan, the two opposing moieties that govern marriage relations in Namok’s Ungkum community. These tribal moieties were brought together into one community under the governance of the Christian missions that were established in the Lockhart River area in 1920. Also apparent in Namok’s work are themes relating to traditional knowledge of country including kinship relations as well as tribal law in relation to the both the individual and their community. In fact, it was her wish to explore and establish her correct lineage, her ‘right place’ within the whole, that initially sparked much of the imagery that takes shape throughout the entire scope of Namok’s art.
EXHIBITED
Painting Words, December 2022, Cooee Art | Redfern
Sand, Salt and Spirit, August 2017, Cooee Art Paddington
ARTIST PROFILE
