David Doyle

David Doyle  - “The Art of Broken Hill: Traditional to Contemporary” group exhibition at Parliament House

David Doyle is a Barkindji artist, poet and educator based in Broken Hill. He has been an Aboriginal Health Practitioner for over twenty years and a Senior Aboriginal Health Worker for the Royal Flying Doctor Service for the past five years, travelling across the Far West into South Australia and Queensland. Highly regarded and deeply respected in his community, he is involved as a workshop teacher for the Men’s Sheds in Menindee and Wilcannia and has been teaching in the Menindee Central School (his former school) Art Program, through the Royal Flying Doctors Service for several years.   

As an emerging carver and artist, he creates work across a diverse range of media. His ongoing research into traditional methods of harvesting and processing traditional food sources is a great source of inspiration for his visual arts practice. He carves native timbers; emu eggs and freshwater mussel shells and casts objects in bronze and works with slumped glass. He creates works that talk to the links between caring for community and Country and notes that his success would not be possible without the support of his family and community.   

He has participated in local exhibitions, including Fresh Bark 2018, Baaka Stories 2019, and the Maari Ma Indigenous Art Awards in 2018, 2019 and 2021. In 2020 he facilitated an emu egg carving demonstration for Sydney Living Museums at the invitation of Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist and curator, Dr Jonathan Jones. David follows the traditions of his great-grandmother who was an emu carver and now David is the only other emu egg carver in his family.   

In 2022, David was a participant of the Cementa Regional Artist Mentoring Program, and was in the group exhibition at Firstdraft Gallery, Woolloomooloo, Sydney. He has recently launched a cultural tourism enterprise called Wontanella, on Barkindji Country in Menindee, Far West New South Wales.