A couple of weeks ago (14th-16th of August) I attended the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair as well as the 2008 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. The weather in Darwin was rather warm (34 degrees celsius every day) which made a nice change from the particularly cold Sydney weather that we have been plagued with of late. For those of you not familiar with the Telstra Awards, the award was established in 1984 to recognise the important contribution that Indigenous artists make to the visual arts in Australia. According to the awards website ” The Award attracts a range of Indigenous artists from all parts of the country and about 100 works are selected each year from around 300 entries. The diversity and style of work submitted each year reflects the changing face of contemporary Aboriginal art practice”

In total there five different prizes given in four different categories. The prizes are:

* Overall Award - $40,000 prize
* the Telstra General Painting Award - $4000 prize
* the Telstra Bark Painting Award- $4000 prize
* the Telstra Work on Paper Award- $4000 prize
* the Wandjuk Marika 3D Memorial Award (sponsored by Telstra)- $4000 prize

You can see a list of the winners here:
http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/museums/exhibitions/natsiaa/25/pdf/room_brochure.pdf

What does the Telstra Aboriginal Art Awards have to do with the Biennale I hear you ask, well, the winner of the general painting award was Doreen Reid Nakamarra (see bio details here) who happens to be one of the artists who created a work for the biennale. The work that won the $4,000 Telstra General Painting Award (image 1) is an untitled work that depicts designs associated with the rockhole site of Marrapinti, west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia. “The lines in the painting depict the creek at the site and the sandhills that surround it. In ancestral times, a group of women of the Nangala and Napangati kinship subsections camped at this site during their travels towards the east. While at the site the women made nose bones, also known as marrapinti, which are worn through a hole made in the nose web. During ceremonies relating to Marrapinti, the older women pierced the nasal septums of the younger women who were participating in the ceremony. Nose bones were originally used by both men and women but are now only inserted by the older generation on ceremonial occasions. Upon completion of the ceremonies at Marrapinti, the women continued their travels east passing through Wala Wala, Ngaminya and Wirrulnga, before heading north-east to Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay)”. (description from Papunya Tula Artists)

For the Biennale, Doreen has painted an extremely beautiful work that, just as the Telstra Award winning work, depicting designs associated with the rockhole and soakage water site of Marrapinti, west of the Pollock Hills in Western Australia. What is unusual about this work is that it is being displayed horizontally on a sort of plinth in order to accentuate the 3d effects created by the patterns in this work. According to the Biennale website “Her pictorial style is based on repeated gestures and lines that build up a three dimensional optical field suggestive of specific stories associated with her land, but possibly also of movement generally – immaterial waves that move the world continuously”

I never fail to be amazed by the work being produced by Australia’s indigenous artists whose work is not only visually spectacular but culturally, historically and artistically significant.  I think that congratulations are in order for Doreen Reid Nakamarra for being chosen to part of the Biennale and for winning the Telstra Painting Award.

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Nicholas Forrest is an art market analyst, art critic and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. He is the founder of http://www.artmarketblog.com, writes the art column for the magazine Antiques and Collectibles for Pleasure and Profit and contributes to many other publications.