Judges for the NATSIAAs

It’s a year for the academics to shine at the NATSIAAs in Darwin next month as the final judges have been announced, and two of the three have university positions.

First there’s Dr Stephen Gilchrist. Belonging to the Yamatji people of the Inggarda language group of northwest Western Australia, Dr Gilchrist is an Associate Professor in the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia. He is a writer and curator who has worked with the Indigenous Australian collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the British Museum in 2008, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2005-2010), and the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College (2011-2013). Stephen has curated numerous exhibitions in Australia and the United States, including the properly titled Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia in 2016, a pioneering show at Harvard Uni including more than 70 First Nations works. And he’s written extensively on Indigenous Art such as the wonderfully headed, Jananggoo Butcher Cherel “Am I a Good Painter or Not?”

Then Professor Brian Martin, who is the director of Wominjeka Djeembana Indigenous Research Lab at Monash Uni in Melbourne. Brian is a descendant of Bundjalung, Muruwari and Kamilaroi peoples.
He’s also represented by William Mora Galleries and has been a practising artist for thirty years, exhibiting both nationally and internationally specifically in the media of painting and drawing. At Mora he’s held eight exhibitions between 2013 and 24 all called Methexical Countryscapes, which may be drawn works, but look more like engaging photographs of trees on various different tribal lands. He explains that his research and practice focuses on refiguring creative practice and culture from an Indigenous ideological perspective based on a reciprocal relationship to Country.

And Wominjeka Djeembana comprises the largest group of First Nations researchers within Monash University, including artist Brook Andrew and everywhere curator, Kimberley Moulton.

Out in the wild world, the last judge is Meriam Mer artist Gail Mabo who is also the daughter of Torres Strait land rights campaigner Eddie Mabo and educator and activist Bonita Mabo. She was formerly a dancer and choreographer.

Mabo’s star maps, constructed out of bamboo, shells and cotton, demonstrate her people’s complex understanding of celestial navigation and have come to define her artistic practice. In the artwork Tagai, seen in the Biennale of Sydney in 2022, this ancestral technology depicts the constellation that Torres Strait Islanders consult to guide them safely through the seas when they travel from one island to another. The movement of the stars also signalled the changing seasons. Tagai takes its shape from the form of a man standing on a canoe holding up a spear, with the Southern Cross contained in his left hand. One of the stars in the Southern Cross was named Koiki in 2015 after Gail Mabo’s father, Eddie Koiki Mabo.

And she’s been shown at Monash University’s Museum of Art – so almost an academic!

The artists that the trio are judging on August 6th are to be found here. Their wisdom (or otherwise) will be revealed on the evening of Fridasy 8th August. Maybe here.

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