ROSELLA NAMOK - THE FAMILY
ROSELLA NAMOK
THE FAMILY, 2005
99 x 245.5 cm
Synthetic Polymer Paint on Canvas
REGION
Lockhart River, QLD
PROVENANCE
Hogarth, NSW
Private Collection, NSW
STORY
"When you go out camping somewhere...it’s good to go out with them old girls...listen them yarn. You make a nice hot fire...hot tea...sit down and listen to them yarn...plus ’ee nice night...sit down...they can yarn all night. I just listen...listen that mob...those old girls yarn...they tell you about how they been small and how they grow up...it’s good...listen them yarn." Rosella Namok
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.
ARTIST PROFILE
