It’s Telstra NATSIA Awards time again – amazingly the 41st such annual prize session, 33 of them funded by Telstra. Currently that generosity is to the tune of $175,000 to the artists and more to permit hosts, the Museum & Art Galley of the NT in Darwin, to buy artworks for its collection.
And again it’s big art that seems to have taken the judges’ collective eye. But, whereas previous years have seen something big but not necessarily very beautiful given the gong, this time the trio of judges seem to have matched dramatic size, cultural depth and visual appeal.
Well done to Putuparri Tom Lawford, a cultural leader from Fitzroy Crossing, Keith Munro, Head of Indigenous at the MCA in Sydney, and Katina Davidson, Curator of Indigenous Art at QAGoMA in Brisbane.
Other factors at play behind the judging of the art as art are the Maralinga atomic testing and its long tail of consequences, and the truth-telling that has become such a necessity in post-Uluru Statement times, especially for younger First Nations artists.
How much politics is there in the work hailed as the ‘Big Telstra’ winner for 2024, I wonder?
It’s the almost 3 metre by 2 metre canvas, Kamanti by Spinifex elder and artist Noli Rictor. Possibly the youngest ‘first contact’ Aboriginal person in Australia, Noli, his parents and brothers Mick and Ian were located by relatives in 1986 in the remote Great Victoria Desert of WA. Noli was 21, transitioning from an isolated life in the desert to join other Spinifex people who had been relocated due to the British nuclear testing at Maralinga.
Noli’s vast knowledge of Country and Law earned him immediate respect among the older men of the settlement. He now lives and works in Tjuntjuntjara with the Spinifex Arts Project, where, according to the NATSIAA judges,“His expert use of colour and composition creates shimmering fields, carving the Wati Kutjara Tjukurpa (Two Men Creation Story) into the layered landscape. At times the paint dances on the canvas’s surface; disrupting the eyes’ ability to focus, giving the work a truly mesmerising appeal from its painterly merits“.
The judges acknowledged the significance of the work and noted that the commanding scale is apt given the importance of the story presented – an epic narrative following the movement of a father and son water serpents who traverse the Spinifex Lands on ceremonial business.
The Telstra Bark Painting Award is also acknowledged for its munificent size – 178 x 102 cm. It’s the work of Yolŋu Matha man, Wurrandan Marawili.
The first bark paintings collected early in the 20th Century were body designs translated to bark. After almost 100 years, some artists at the Buku-Larrŋgay art centre have returned to this format. Rumbal is the Yolŋu word for body but also means ‘true’. Marawili’s design shows the estate known as Baraltja, a mangrove creek where the Lightning Snake Mundukul fires off electric charges into the sky.
Marawili is also lead singer and dancer for the Garraŋali band. Painting since 2017, his work was selected to be part of Madayin, the significant exhibition of bark paintings currently touring the United States. In 2021, Wurrandan was one of the featured artists in Murrŋiny, a groundbreaking exhibition of artists from Yirrkala working experimentally in engraving on found metal, usually road signs.
The judges commented, “The scale of the artwork reinforces its immense presence, and we commend the artist’s decision in the composition to leave bare a generous raw bark frame around the painted area to reflect the original scale of the painting on the body of initiates undertaking the next step in their life journey“.
Back to Maralinga for the Telstra Emerging Artist Award to Josina Pumani, a Pitjantjatjara language speaker, for her starkly black and red ceramic work Maralinga 2024.
The effects of the British atomic testing at Maralinga had lasting impact on the Aṉangu people whose lives, lands and livelihoods were destroyed. As Pumani puts it, “Maralinga hurt our lands and people and our story needs to be told … we think about it all the time. Why did this happen to us?”. Nearly 70 years on the damage still informs the lives of Aṉangu people on the APY Lands.
For the judges, this work “demonstrates the role artists can play in public discourse and truth-telling in history; particularly the recentering of the Aboriginal voice in the Maralinga story”.
The hand-built form of Josina Pumani’s work is bulbous at the top representing the cloud and winds of the nuclear explosion and the judges felt it also conveyed the anxiety and tension caused by this event. The rich black in the artwork is representative of the cloud and fall out, while the interior red is indicative of the danger, immense heat and warning entailed in this story.
From the relative youth of both Pumani and Marawili, the Telstra General Painting Award goes to Mangala language elder, Lydia Balbal, who lives between Bidyadanga and Broome.
Her work, ‘Keeping up with the Balbals’ 2023 is painted on a car bonnet, and is a subversive and cheeky play on words. It suggests the distances that Aboriginal people need to travel today. Lydia Balbal always goes her own way, and her artworks reveal her as a sentimentalist, a memory keeper and a dedicated mother with a wild sense of humour.
The judges justified: “Lydia Balbal is a master of painting gestural colour-field scenes. ‘Keeping up with the Balbals’ has an undeniable presence in its painterly qualities, mapping the landscape of her Country. The playfulness in the title is held with a double-edged sword. It hints at tall poppy syndrome within tight-knit communities across Australia, but allows the artist’s personality to shine through. We were impressed by the many layers of cultural, social and interpersonal meaning within this spectacular work”.
Three generations of artistic achievement have gone into the Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Award winner, Obed Namirrkki, a Kuninjku language speaker who lives in Maningrida on the mid-Arnhemland coast. His lorrkon/ceremonial pole, ‘Kunkurra’ 2024 is 231.5 cms tall.
Obed is the son of senior artist Ivan Namirrkki and the grandson of renowned bark painter Peter Marralwanga, and his artistic approach echoes his father’s signature style of arranging bands of rarrk into concentric diamond forms. Like his father, Obed contrasts the diamond arrangement of fine rarrk with borders and bands of dotting.
Kunkurra, the spiralling wind, is associated with several sites in the Kardbam clan estate. At this site, two of the most important Kuninjku Creation Beings, a father and son known as na-korrkko, are believed to have hunted and eaten a goanna. They left some of the goanna fat behind, which turned into the rock that still stands there today.
The judges were drawn to the resolved presence of Obed Namirrkki’s striking and well-executed sculptural work. “The contrasting bands of pitch black with un-uniformed white ochre dots are remarkable against the very fine and precise rarrk, painted predominantly in warm ochre reds, yellows and whites. Just as the cultural story associated with this artwork is complex with many layers, the artist has managed to intertwine his own individual approach while honouring his family’s painting legacy in this impressive lorrkon”.
Was it inevitable that a Fitzroy Crossing judge would favour a work from his Country? Well, it sounds as though the Telstra Multimedia Award-winner Natalie Davey, a Walmajarri and Bunuba languages speaker, won for the sheer drama of her film (plus work on paper), ‘River report’ 2024.
Her 10 minute video depicts the flooding event at Fitzroy Crossing in 2023 which shut down the Kimberley. “I was in disbelief as I filmed”, Davey recalls. “Family has passed down stories reaching back to when a star fell in the desert; however, we did not have any references to guide us through this flood. Our entire community was affected; mine is one story amongst many”.
The judges assessed, “There is a call to action in this artwork, consisting of a hand-painted storyboard and first-person documentary style video with a home-movie aesthetic. This very personalised work brings attention to climate change and environmental disasters affecting our communities, particularly the 100-year record-breaking flood of the Fitzroy River in 2023”.
Finally, we find an urban work winning the Telstra Work on Paper Award. ‘An Australian Landscape’ 2024 is the ironic title of Shannon Brett’s photograph of a rural roadside barrier carrying racial epithets. The Wakka Wakka, Butchulla and Gooreng Gooreng identifying artist lives Brisbane.
The judges read deeply into its meanings: “The golden gilded framing of ‘An Australian Landscape’ satirically romanticises a brutal honesty about race relations in this country. In reflecting on the history of Australian landscape painting, this work talks about the absence of the truth; the existence of Aboriginal people in these landscapes and the horrors of frontier violence”.
The artist herself adds, “Through this artwork, I want to reframe the way that we receive racism – I want those who do these cruel things to see the pain in themselves, to learn that this is not the way. I want to share with them that my message is one of respect for all First Nations people, to show everyone that we are still here, living on our own sovereign lands as the true leaders of this place, as we always will be”.
Shannon’s PhD research on whiteness responds to systemic racism and misogyny in Australia from decolonial and black feminist perspectives. They are a member of the Contemporary Aboriginal Art Collective proppaNOW.
On the basis of the Telstra NATSIAA catalogue, I’d also draw your attention to the following finalists, selected from 238 entries for the Awards this year:
Allery Sandy’s bitterly blackened ‘Burnt Country’, Brian Robinson’s surprisingly spiritual ‘Sometimes the only pay-off for having faith….’, Louisa Kngwarray Long revealing her descent from the great Kathleen Patyarre, Louise Daniels capturing the dark drama of ‘Preminghana’ in far west Tassie, Wally Wilfred’s unique style with his painted ‘Mokuy’, and the 2022 WA State Cultural Treasure Helicopter finally making the cut after a career almost as long as the NATSIAAs.
And don’t forget that Darwin’s Salon des Refuses and the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair are both on and available online too.
