Janice Murray

Janice Murray is a Tinagu woman born in Milikapiti, Melville Island, in 1966. Her discrete community inhabits a small landmass in the eastern Timor Sea, off the coast of the Northern Territory of Australia.  

Murray has practising as an artist since 1996.  A skilled painter, draftsman, sculptor and printmaker, she has developed a distinctive visual idiom in which dynamic, graphic patterns serve as compositional devices to describe a figurative subject: usually the rare bird species native to the Tiwi Islands. 

Birds - from owls to bush turkeys and Burdekin ducks - inhabit the Tiwi Islands with vital abundance.  A wide gamut of native bid species are also prominently prefigured in local creation stories, most often appearing as messengers spirits to ancestral wanderers.

Unifying Murray’s mixed-media practice is a profound knowledge of traditional culture, landscape and language. Her distinctive style is informed by the millennia-old, sacred iconography of jilamara, or the body-painting designs applied to dancers. These ceremonial patterns, historically executed using ephemeral materials wrought from the earth, are also applied to the tutini (ceremonial poles) and tunga (bark bags) during ritual practise.  In her fine art compositions, these ancient motifs are elegantly transposed - to arresting effect. 

Janice Murray has been awarded many impressive accolades during her significant career. Her work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, The British Museum, London and Newcastle University, Newcastle.