This artwork is about how my people would use and navigate Titui they would travel by using the stars and use the stars for calendar. When the stars would move it would mean different seasons, dry or wet season, which fish are breeding on the reefs turtle or dugong season by looking at night at the stars. The ladies would sit at night watching the stars how they move they would know what time of the day a good time to go out to their garden and get ready for wet season by looking at the stars because it was a calendar for us even still through this day they will learn us about the stars "TITUI"
Glen Mackie (Kei Kalak)
Kulkalgal people.
Born 1975, Kala Lagaw Ya Country, Iama/Yam Island, Zenadth Kes/Torres Strait Islands.
Lives and works Gimuy Walaburra Yidinji/Yirrangangi Country, Gimuy/Cairns, Queensland.
Glen Mackie (Kei Kalak) is from Iama/Yam Island, and his totems are the hammerhead shark and the crocodile. His bold minarr, or infill-design style, incorporates family totemic designs as well as his own invented repeating patterns. He retells the myths and stories he inherited from older family members, and credits his artist grandfather for teaching him to carve. Mackie fiercely wants to preserve his culture by retelling the stories of his community for the benefit of young people of the Islands and the general public.
The bold minar, or infill-design style in Glen Mackie (Kei Kalak)’s work incorporates family totemic designs and his own invented geometric repeating water pattern. As one of Yam Island’s few practising artists he feels he has a responsibility to keep alive the sacred stories of the four brothers who travelled from the north before memory and settled Zenadh Kes, more commonly known as the Central and eastern Torres Strait Island.
GLEN MACKIE | 'TITUI' | 2025 | Vinyl-cut relief print | 20 (h) x 20 (w) cm | Edition of 20
