Regina Pilawuk Wilson (1948, Daly River Region, NT, Australia) is a Ngan’gikurrungurr woman, senior artist and Cultural Director of Durrmu Arts Aboriginal Corporation. In 1973, together with her husband, Harold Wilson, Regina founded the Peppimenarti (meaning ‘large rock’) Community as a permanent settlement for the Ngan’gikurrungurr people. The location of the community is an important dreaming site for the Ngan’gikurrungurr language group and is situated amid wetlands and floodplains at the centre of the Daly River Aboriginal Reserve, 300 kilometres southwest of Darwin. In 2003 Regina won the General Painting category of the Telstra National Indigenous and Torres-Strait Islander Award for a golden syaw (fish-net) painting. Examples of her work are held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, The National Gallery of Victoria, The Gallery of Modern Art (Queensland Art Gallery), The British Museum and numerous private and corporate collections in Australia and overseas.
In Dilly bag Wilson extrapolates on her documentation of material and weaving histories. The looped string and spiral configurations of traditional dilly bags, provide simple visual motifs that Regina builds upon to create precise structures, underscored by the delicacy and flexibility of woven fabric. Fluidity and tension are both at play in this abstracted rendition of the rhythmic process of twining and accretion. Regina uses the subtle colours of bush dyes in her painting, including lightened areas of natural fade that would come with time during an object’s traditional use.1
Regina’s paintings and weavings have been exhibited in major national and international exhibitions, including Dreaming Their Way: Australian Aboriginal Women Painters (National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, 2006), Floating Life (QAGOMA, 2009), The Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2009), Ancestral Modern (Seattle Art Museum, 2012), String Theory (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2013), Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia (Harvard Art Museums, 2016), Marking the Infinite (touring USA & Canada, 2016-19), The TarraWarra Biennale (2023), and Woven Histories (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2025).
Her paintings have been included in many group exhibitions at public and private art institutions, including the 3rd Moscow Biennale of Art, the Wynne Prize (2008 and 2009), AGNSW, and Dreaming Their Way: Australian Aboriginal Women Painters at the National Museum of the Arts, Washington. Her work was recently exhibited in Marking the Infinite, at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC (2018) and at Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville (2018).
1. Art Leven, Regina Wilson, accessed 26th September 2025, https://www.cooeeart.com.au/artist-archive-non-gallery/regina-wilson
Dilly Bag (398-09), 2009
PROVENANCE
Durrmu Arts
Caruna & Reid Fine Art, 2011
Private Collection (acquired from the above)
$28,000
In stock
Regina Pilawuk Wilson (1948, Daly River Region, NT, Australia) is a Ngan’gikurrungurr woman, senior artist and Cultural Director of Durrmu Arts Aboriginal Corporation. In 1973, together with her husband, Harold Wilson, Regina founded the Peppimenarti (meaning ‘large rock’) Community as a permanent settlement for the Ngan’gikurrungurr people. The location of the community is an important dreaming site for the Ngan’gikurrungurr language group and is situated amid wetlands and floodplains at the centre of the Daly River Aboriginal Reserve, 300 kilometres southwest of Darwin. In 2003 Regina won the General Painting category of the Telstra National Indigenous and Torres-Strait Islander Award for a golden syaw (fish-net) painting. Examples of her work are held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, The National Gallery of Victoria, The Gallery of Modern Art (Queensland Art Gallery), The British Museum and numerous private and corporate collections in Australia and overseas.
In Dilly bag Wilson extrapolates on her documentation of material and weaving histories. The looped string and spiral configurations of traditional dilly bags, provide simple visual motifs that Regina builds upon to create precise structures, underscored by the delicacy and flexibility of woven fabric. Fluidity and tension are both at play in this abstracted rendition of the rhythmic process of twining and accretion. Regina uses the subtle colours of bush dyes in her painting, including lightened areas of natural fade that would come with time during an object’s traditional use.1
Regina’s paintings and weavings have been exhibited in major national and international exhibitions, including Dreaming Their Way: Australian Aboriginal Women Painters (National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, 2006), Floating Life (QAGOMA, 2009), The Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2009), Ancestral Modern (Seattle Art Museum, 2012), String Theory (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2013), Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia (Harvard Art Museums, 2016), Marking the Infinite (touring USA & Canada, 2016-19), The TarraWarra Biennale (2023), and Woven Histories (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2025).
Her paintings have been included in many group exhibitions at public and private art institutions, including the 3rd Moscow Biennale of Art, the Wynne Prize (2008 and 2009), AGNSW, and Dreaming Their Way: Australian Aboriginal Women Painters at the National Museum of the Arts, Washington. Her work was recently exhibited in Marking the Infinite, at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC (2018) and at Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville (2018).
1. Art Leven, Regina Wilson, accessed 26th September 2025, https://www.cooeeart.com.au/artist-archive-non-gallery/regina-wilson
