In its 27th year, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAAs) inaugurated a sixth category. The ˜New Media Award’ required artists to submit works reflecting the theme ˜connections’ with the stated aim to provide ˜a national platform for indigenous artists working with new technologies and cross-disciplinary areas’.
Connections could be considered the general theme of every NATSIAA. Each year connection to country is propounded though works from remote communities, while disruptions, dislocations and reconnecting with lost or fractured cultures is commonly addressed by Indigenous artists having grown up on missions, as well as those working in the more densely settled regions outside the so-called Rowley line frontier.
For the full review, see Art Monthly Australia, Issue 234, October 2010, out now or available via http://www.artmonthly.org.au
