The Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards was a non-acquisitive art award established by the Art Gallery of Western Australia and funded by the Government of Western Australia from 2008 to 2015, to support and encourage Indigenous Australian artists. [1]
It included three prizes: an overall prize of A$50,000, the Western Australian Indigenous Art Award; A$10,000 prize for the top Western Australian artist, Western Australian Artist Award; and a A$5,000 People's Choice Award. Entry was open to "all adult Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists currently living in Australia, working in any theme or media, including (but not restricted to) painting on bark, canvas and paper, prints, sculpture, fibre art, ceramics, glass, photography, and digital media". [1]
In 2008, Patrick Tjungurrayi won the main prize and June Walkutjukurr won the WA Artist prize, and the People's Choice award was won by Shane Pickett. [2]
The 2009 winner of the main prize was Torres Strait Islander man Ricardo Idagi; the Western Australian prize winner was Wakartu Cory Surprise. [3] [2]
In 2015, Quandamooka artist Megan Cope won the main prize for her video installation The Blaktism, [4] while Vincent Namatjira was one of the finalists. [5]
Indigenous Australian art includes art made by Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including collaborations with others. It includes works in a wide range of media including painting on leaves, bark painting, wood carving, rock carving, watercolour painting, sculpting, ceremonial clothing and sand painting; art by Indigenous Australians that pre-dates European colonisation by thousands of years, up to the present day.
Torres Strait Islanders are the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait Islands, which are part of the state of Queensland, Australia. Ethnically distinct from the Aboriginal people of the rest of Australia, they are often grouped with them as Indigenous Australians. Today there are many more Torres Strait Islander people living in mainland Australia than on the Islands.
Murray Island is the only town on Meer Island in the Torres Strait Island Region, Queensland, Australia. The island is part of the Murray Island Group in the Torres Strait. The town is on the north-west coast of the island and is within the locality of Mer Island. The island is of volcanic origin, the most easterly inhabited island of the Torres Strait Islands archipelago, just north of the Great Barrier Reef. The name Meer/Mer/Maer comes from the native Meriam language. In the 2016 census, Murray Island had a population of 453 people.
The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), established as the National Gallery of South Australia in 1881, is located in Adelaide. It is the most significant visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of almost 45,000 works of art, making it the second largest state art collection in Australia. As part of North Terrace cultural precinct, the Gallery is flanked by the South Australian Museum to the west and the University of Adelaide to the east.
The National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) is Australia's longest running Indigenous art award. Established in 1984 by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin, the annual award is commonly referred to as the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, the Telstra Award or Telstra Prize. It is open to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists working in all media.
Indigenous Australians are people with familial heritage to groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They include the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia. The term Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, or the person's specific cultural group, is often preferred, though the terms First Nations of Australia, First Peoples of Australia and First Australians are also increasingly common.
Makinti Napanangka was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous Australian artist from Australia's Western Desert region. She was referred to posthumously as Kumentje. The term Kumentje was used instead of her personal name as it is customary among many indigenous communities not to refer to the deceased by their original given name for some time after their death. She lived in the communities of Haasts Bluff, Papunya, and later at Kintore, about 50 kilometres (31 mi) north-east of the Lake MacDonald region where she was born, on the border of the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
Danie Mellor is an Australian artist who was the winner of the 2009 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. Born in Mackay, Queensland, Mellor grew up in Scotland, Australia, and South Africa before undertaking tertiary studies at North Adelaide School of Art, the Australian National University (ANU) and Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. He then took up a post lecturing at Sydney College of the Arts. He works in different media including printmaking, drawing, painting, and sculpture. Considered a key figure in contemporary Indigenous Australian art, the dominant theme in Mellor's art is the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian cultures.
Doreen Reid Nakamarra was an Australian Aboriginal artist and painter. Reid was considered an important artist within the Western Desert cultural bloc. She was a leading painter at the Papunya Tula artist cooperative in Central Australia.
Wintjiya Napaltjarri, and also known as Wintjia Napaltjarri No. 1, is a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. She is the sister of artist Tjunkiya Napaltjarri; both were wives of Toba Tjakamarra, with whom Wintjiya had five children.
Linda Yunkata Syddick Napaltjarri is a Pintupi- and Pitjantjatjara- speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. Her father was killed when she was young; her mother later married Shorty Lungkarta Tjungarrayi, an artist whose work was a significant influence on Linda Syddick's painting.
Ngoia Pollard Napaltjarri is a Walpiri-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. Ngoia Pollard married Jack Tjampitjinpa, who became an artist working with the Papunya Tula company, and they had five children.
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art is the modern art work produced by Indigenous Australians, that is, Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people. It is generally regarded as beginning in 1971 with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, involving Aboriginal artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, and facilitated by white Australian teacher and art worker Geoffrey Bardon. The movement spawned widespread interest across rural and remote Aboriginal Australia in creating art, while contemporary Indigenous art of a different nature also emerged in urban centres; together they have become central to Australian art. Indigenous art centres have fostered the emergence of the contemporary art movement, and as of 2010 were estimated to represent over 5000 artists, mostly in Australia's north and west.
Cairns Indigenous Art Fair is an arts and cultural event in the northern Australian city of Cairns that brings together indigenous art centres, commercial and public galleries, artist collectives, studios and arts organisations to sell and exhibit the art work of Queensland's recognised and leading emerging Indigenous Australian visual artists.
Bindi Cole Chocka is an Australian contemporary new media artist, photographer, writer and curator.
Tiger Palpatja was an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands.
Jody Broun is an Indigenous Australian artist and activist with a long-standing career, most recently with her current position being Chief Director of the Aboriginal Housing Office. She has completed a Diploma of Teaching, Bachelor of Education and a Masters in Philosophy. In 1998 she was awarded first prize in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award for her artwork "White Fellas Come To Talk Bout Land" and in 2005 Broun was awarded first place in the Canberra Art Prize for her artwork "Half-Time Game". Along with these major awards Broun has displayed many artworks in solo and group exhibitions, winning many other awards, and grants. Broun is a Yindjibarndi woman with family connection from the Pilbara region in North Western Australia, and is known for her dedication to Indigenous communities in Australia.
Vincent Namatjira is an Aboriginal Australian artist living in Indulkana, in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara in South Australia. His work has been nominated for the Archibald Prize several times, and won the Ramsay Art Prize in 2019. He is the great-grandson of the Arrente watercolour artist Albert Namatjira.
Barbara Mbitjana Moore is an Anmatyerre woman who grew up in Ti-Tree in the Northern Territory, until she moved to Amata in South Australia's Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands to live with her husband. Whilst living in Amata Moore began painting at Tjala Arts in April 2003 and, since then, has received widespread recognition and being listed at a winner at the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award's in 2012 and a finalist many more times. Moore has also been a finalist for the Wynne Prize.
The Yarrenyty Arltere Artists are a collective of Indigenous artists from Yarrenyty Arltere Town Camp in Mparntwe in the Northern Territory of Australia, best known for its soft sculptural work.