Kei Aka Kudin

Glen Mackie, who is known as Kei Kalak (Big Boy), has been at the forefront of the Zenadth Kes/Torres Strait Islander print movement since the 1990s. He was taught to carve and paint by members of his extended family and explores both family stories and environmental issues in his works. Mackie has developed a distinct infill design or minarr (patterning), which is informed by his family’s design and employs an inverted water pattern that is repeated across his works. This artistic style gives each of his artworks a sense of the ebb and flow of the tides that inform his home environment.

Mackie has cultural connections to Iama/Yam Island through his father, and to Masig/Yorke Island through his mother. He grew up on Iama however moved to Gimuy/Cairns to study printmaking at Cairns TAFE in the late 1990s. Following this, Mackie began to work with Gimuy-based master printmaker Theo Tremblay, with whom he continues to collaborate.

This work honours Mackie’s great, great, great-grandmother, Kudin, who hailed from Masig. She married Mackie’s great, great, great-grandfather Edward ‘Yankee Ned’ Mosby, an American Jewish sailor, who likely arrived in the Zenadth Kes through the whaling and pearling industries of the 1860s. Kudin was called ‘Queenie’ by Mosby and it is by that name that she is most remembered.