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- Artist: Ken Wayne Kantilla
- Title: Juamutakari Jilamara (Wet Season Design)
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Art Centre: Ngaruwanajirri, Tiwi Islands
- Size: 17.5 x 19cm
- Medium: Stringbark with Ochre Pigments
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Year born: 1967
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Skin Group: Sun
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Dance: Pig
Ngaruwanajirri means “Helping one another”
This Centre began in 1994 with funding for the support of Tiwi with a disability and the core attendants today are disability artists. They have each developed exceptional creative skill. Sometimes referred to as free, loose, naive, or Outsider art, the work of Ngaruwanajirri artists is unique. A separate group of able-bodied Tiwi carvers work alongside this core group in a purpose-built space adjacent to the Keeping Place creating both large and small carvings.
Ken Wayne Kantilla works at Ngaruwanajirri Art Centre and is the current Chairman. He produces delicately executed works on paper with painstaking skill as well as paintings on canvas, ironwood carvings, and natural ochres on shells. In the 1980s Ken Wayne lived for two years in Victoria, attending St Bede`s College, Mentone. Ken has been included in major Ngaruwanajirri exhibitions since 1996, including Pupini Yinkiti Arimuwu Kapi Winga, Good Food, Sea Food, an ArtBack Nets Travelling Exhibition, 2000 - 2004.
Ken Wayne has a keen interest in Australian rules football, due to the success of his father David Kantilla, a South Australian player in the 1960s. His extreme patience is reflected in the painstakingly careful geometry of his paintings. He is regularly shown in the annual Darwin Ngaruwanajirri Exhibition at the time of the Darwin Festival and in Tarnathi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, Art Gallery of South Australia.
Ken Wayne's artwork is characterized by his exceptional skill of painting straight lines by hand. These lines create a rippled rhythm within his paintings often accentuated by depictions of daily Tiwi life including animals and cultural objects. Although his lines are robotically precise, the slight irregularity in his initial drawing reveals the unaided touch of his work.
Ken's unique style is enhanced by his exclusive use of natural Tiwi ochres. His meticulous attention to detail and unwavering dedication to his craft has earned him a well-deserved reputation as a skilled and respected artist in the community. Ken's artwork has been showcased in galleries and exhibitions across Australia
