Warwick Keen on NGURUDJALAWALIBINGALIN

Warwick Keen has been a practicing artist for over 40 years and is no stranger to Wollongong Art Gallery. In 2018 he was commissioned to create original design for the large mural painted on the eastern side of the Gallery in celebration of our 40-year anniversary.

Warwick has multiple works exhibited in Landscape Tells the Way: Illawarra, including a piece called NGURUDJALAWALIBINGALIN (Dharawal – ‘country owns us’).

In his artist statement, Warwick said “I felt like I needed to develop works that reflect my Indigenous connection and to also promote to all exhibition viewers the significance of the Dharawal people of the Illawarra and their 60,000-year history of living in this place”.

Artist statement

Being the only Aboriginal artist within this exhibition raised quite a few questions for me. I felt like I needed to develop works that reflect my Indigenous connection and to also promote to all exhibition viewers the significance of the Dharawal people of the Illawarra and their 60,000-year history of living in this place.

In 2012, I donated a three-dimensional painting/construction entitled Reading between the lines, telling of the negative impacts that colonisation had forced on to the first nations people. I utilised text within this work to tell this story.

In 2017 I was asked to develop a design and to then to create and install a mural to grace the exterior side wall of WAG. John Monteleone and Sue Bessell indicated to me that they were hoping to see a similar mural design based on the 'Reading between the lines' painting, and so 'Cultural Conversations' was installed, utilising my design, and painted by Simon Thomas (Chalktalk).

The installation of this mural marked the 40th anniversary of WAG. The mural remains on this building today and is a popular landmark and talking point for locals and visitors alike.

During my time in the Illawarra, I have been involved in 4 other major art projects, where I have utilised similar designs, yet the text is altered to suit the context of the work that I have created. The familiar pattern making, and the utilisation of appropriate text has developed into a signature style, which people relate back to me. Hence, the inclusion of this piece in the exhibition.

My final artwork for Landscape Tells the Way: Illawarra is based on that same patterning and includes Dharawal language text as a means for me to create a strong cultural connection to the first nation’s people of the Illawarra.

NGURUDJALAWALIBINGALIN serves also as a reminder of the original inhabitants of the Illawarra, and their cultural philosophy.

My thanks go to Dr Jodi Edwards for her assistance with the selection of the Dharawal text, which I have utilised in this artwork. The Dharawal Language Dictionary, developed by Jodi and others has been a great source of learning, during the painting process.

List of Dharawal words and their English translations

All words utilised emphasise aspects of Dharawal country.

Image: Installation shot, Landscape Tells the Way: Illawarra, 2024, Wollongong Art Gallery. Featuring works by Warwick Keen including NGURUDJALAWALIBINGALIN (Dharawal – ‘country owns us’), 2024, acrylic on canvas. Photography by Riste Andrievski.