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August 27 – September 2, 2022 | No. 414
August 27 – September 2, 2022 | No. 414
August 27 – September 2, 2022 | No. 414
The tiny, kaleidoscopic Gouldian finch recently returned to Darwin. For some months now, flocks of the endangered birds have been seen in the trees and long grass at Lee Point, in some of Darwin’s last intact – for now – tropical habitat. The rare finch began disappearing a few decades ago when the development of Darwin accelerated, which, along with changes in fire patterns, wrecked much of its natural habitat. The finch’s soft birdsong might be heard as a lament for ecological destruction to come, or as an ode to survival.
Larrakia Country is a diverse tropical ecosystem with dense emerald and brown trees, occasional sparks of fuchsia, a warm opalescent sea. At dusk a pink haze suffuses the sky as the sinking sun colours all it touches with a hushed purple. The cliff faces are powdered with bands of pink, white, burning orange and soft yellow, forming a mirror image of the sunset. But this beauty is being eroded, with plans to clear the land and build 800 Defence houses at Lee Point, Darwin’s ongoing waterfront development and the construction of a garish new Charles Darwin University campus in the city. Throughout the Northern Territory, fracking, mining, development and pastoralism are sucking Country bone-dry.
This is the context for one of Australia’s richest art awards, the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, which hosts NATSIAA, overlooks the sea at Fannie Bay. The air outside is moist and salty, and effulgent light reflects off every surface. Inside the air-conditioned gallery, the winner of the Works on Paper Award, Nagi (2022) by Larrakia artist Gary Philip Lee, is a reminder of Larrakia Country and Darwin’s uneasy history.
Nagi is a tender portrait of Aboriginal masculinity and kinship. “Nagi” is the Larrakia term for maternal grandfather. The portrait comprises a digital print of a black-and-white archival photograph of Lee’s nagi, Roque Cubillo, who was killed in the Japanese bombing of Darwin wharf in 1942. Lee has softened the image, adding texture to the digital print with the application of oil pastel and pencil. The background is ornamented with pearly gardenias that add a visual, historic and personal depth – Lee’s grandfather wore sweetly scented gardenias on his grey felt hat. Nagi exudes assurance, intimacy and an openness to masculine vulnerability.
The major award ($100,000) was won by Yolŋu artist Margaret Rarru Garrawurra for her woven fibre work Dhomala (pandanus sail) (2022). Like Lee’s Nagi, Dhomala makes an oblique but pertinent reference to the geopolitical history of the Northern Territory. Her sail is woven from pandanus harvested in Arnhem Land, coloured with natural dyes that render the final work in hues of copper, carmine and brown. Suspended by lengths of kurrajong, Dhomala refers to the sails of Makassan ships that journeyed to Arnhem Land to trade with Indigenous peoples. Garrawurra inherits this pre-European invasion history of trade and transcultural collaboration in the tradition of weaving she learnt from her father, who also made dhomala.
Taribelang artist Dylan Sarra’s 1972 (2022) – an ethereal work of charcoal on muslin that also recalls a sail or, perhaps, a bedsheet on a clothesline – makes the connection between colonialism and domesticity. Hanging away from the gallery wall, 1972 is sculpted by the slight breeze that passes through the room.
The lightness of Sarra’s 1972 is counterpoised with its heavy subject: the interface between Indigenous histories and the state’s enmity, expressed in cold bureaucracy. The white muslin is patterned with a subtle frottage of ancient rock carvings from Taribelang Country. “1972”, imprinted in the centre, marks the year that the site of a large petroglyph “gallery” was destroyed without Indigenous consultation under the direction of the Queensland government.
Muslin gauze is used to dress wounds. In 1972, the shadowy charcoal pattern is an afterimage, invoking the absence of a wounded limb. Here healing can come only with the invention of the new: the original Taribelang carvings can never be restored. In the space of rupture, of the wound, Sarra shows how the petroglyphs can persist in contemporary expression.
Dhomala – a fibre work – and 1972 – a drawing on muslin – demonstrate how the NATSIAA prize categories fail to account for different approaches in Indigenous art. There is a specific prize for bark painting and a general painting award. On the other hand, these two artworks – along with ceramics, tools and other “objects” – are forced to compete against other fibre works, such as Bonnie Burarngarra and Freda Ali’s An-gujechiya (2021), for the Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Award. Given that it is the second time in the past four years that a fibre work has won the major prize, it raises the question of why there isn’t a specific category for weaving or fibre. This year’s winner, An-gujechiya, is a fish trap made from burny vine, bush cane and kurrajong. At just under three metres long, it is astounding in terms of its scale, its intricacy and precise detailing, and the labour-intensive process involved in its creation.
Ms D Yunupiŋu’s Yunupiŋu – The Rock (2021) won the bark painting prize this year. The bark combines natural and synthetic pigments from printer ink cartridges, which permitted Yunupiŋu to work in warm pink and fuchsia hues that wash over the background of the painting. In the foreground, four mermaids painted in shades of creamy off-white ochre regard the onlooker, insisting on a reciprocal encounter.
Betty Muffler, a Pitjantjatjara artist, won the general painting award for her acrylic on canvas painting, Ngangkari Ngura (Healing Country) (2021). Muffler’s organic marks swirl vivaciously on the canvas. On a background layered with watery black and dusty pink, a great hive of whitish circles and gestural lines of differing lengths crawl and twist as if they were lively plants or animals. At 78, Muffler, who works through Iwantja Arts, has witnessed the devastation of Country by the state, its allies and agents. She grew up on Ernabella Mission after her family was displaced in the aftermath of the British nuclear testing at Maralinga and Emu Field.
Forty-four language groups are represented in this year’s competition. Jimmy John Thaiday, a Kuz and Peiudu artist from the Torres Strait Islands, won the multimedia award with his video Beyond the lines (2022). This work studies patterns and movements, finding ecological rhythms between the sea, human skin and a stone fish trap that rises out of the water. Louise Malarvie, a Walmajarri and Jaru artist from Kununurra, won the emerging artist award. Her painting, Pamarr Yara (2022), uses earth pigments in muted ochre tones on canvas. With gentle stippling and concentric brush strokes, Malarvie creates a horizontal movement across the canvas that emits a dull phosphorescent glow, like the sun’s light radiating on a rock face.
In an art prize still dominated by paintings on canvas and bark, it’s notable that the entrants’ linguistic diversity isn’t reflected by a diversity of style and practices. The Tennant Creek Brio’s SHOCK & ORE opened in Darwin the same day as the NATSIAA media preview and showed more material and stylistic experimentation than the range of work in this year’s NATSIAA. There were petrochemical memorial poles made from 40-gallon drums, paintings on smashed television screens, paper and acetate mining documents, resin and iron-ore tools, a poker machine sculpted to form a deranged angel – all material artefacts of Tennant Creek.
But NATSIAA is not as much about experimentation and pushing the limits of Indigenous artistic practice as it is about honouring the brilliant work of Indigenous artists and determining the value of their works. The award helps inform the market and institutions, and channels needed money to artists. On the Saturday after NATSIAA opened, a 50-deep line of people waited patiently outside the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art to enter a packed gallery to see a new exhibition by Timo Hogan, the winner of last year’s NATSIAA. If this indicates NATSIAA’s influence, it is also an indication of responsibility: not just to honour Indigenous artistic practice but to encourage its daring and ingenuity.
Telstra NATSIAA is on show at the Museum and Art Gallery Northern Territory until January 15, 2023.
Venues throughout Sydney, until October 2
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, until October 23
EXHIBITION Rauschenberg & Johns: Significant Others
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, until October 30
Home of the Arts, Gold Coast, August 31-September 1
Venues throughout Melbourne, September 8-11
VISUAL ART Metanoia: Nicholas Hopwood
Moonah Arts Centre, Hobart, until August 27
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on August 27, 2022 as "Country visions".
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Tristen Harwood is a writer, cultural critic and researcher, and a descendant of Numbulwar.
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August 27 – September 2, 2022 | No. 414
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