cbOne + 8 Hele

Joseph Williams Jungurayi

Australia

Joseph Williams Jungurayi is a founding member of the Tennant Creek Brio. He is a multimedia artist, carver, writer, poet and emerging cultural leader of the Warumungu community. Williams began his carving as a teenager during the mid 1990s, following in the footsteps of his grandfather Nat Jupurula Williams and being taught by his second grandfather Walter Pula Nelson. “They made them the hard way”, says Williams, with an axe and wood rasp, whereas Williams now utilises a range of modern tools on mostly hardwood to create various reinvented traditional objects including spears, shields, and boomerangs. His work includes paintings and a contemporary perpetuation of traditional objects including kayin (boomerangs), wartikirri (number 7 boomerang), clapping sticks and purnu (coolamons) fashioned from hardwood. He has recently begun experimenting with figurative realism, drawing inspiration from his Warumungu and Croatian heritage.