Bush Doctors Series 5 by Joseph Williams Jungarayi

Size (cm): 104 x 151
Acrylic, pastel & spray paint on linen

Joseph Williams Jungarayi is a founding member of the Tennant Creek Brio, a multimedia artist, carver, writer, poet and emerging cultural leader of the Warumungu community, working for art & culture centres as a translator (he is one of only 20 Warumungu speakers). His practice infuses this training with his knowledge of Warumungu iconography and artistry inherited from his Grandfather, Nat Warano, a senior lawman, stockman, tracker and artist.

In his glowing, figurative paintings, he uses museum and archival collections of Baldwin Spencer’s 1901 photographs to represent smudged and submerged faces of his ancestors. “Every time I go there [Jurnkurakurru], I think of them. That waterhole there is for our swimming, but it was their drinking water – how different our lives are.” Williams’ swept, hazy, glowing paintings aren’t simply incursions into the archive that restore Warumungu ancestors in relation to Country and kin through the healing reinscription of Warumungu iconography.