A Tale of Three Prizes

Posted by Aboriginal Art Directory | 31.07.08

I guess the world of Aboriginal art is not that different to the real world. It just seems more so at times!

When there is Good News to report – it's shouted from the rooftops. When the News is less-than Good – the purveyor buries his or her head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich! Why not come clean with the same directness that they accentuated the positive?

Actually, the really Good News at this time hasn't had a huge impact on Eastern Australia – or Over East as the Westies in Perth prefer to call it. Which is a pity because the Western Australian Premier's Indigenous Art Award of $50,000 is the biggest in the country and involves other benefits such as inviting all 16 nominated artists to Perth where they can interact with WA Art Gallery curators. If they're fellow-Westies, they're also eligeable for a $10,000 local Indigenous Artist Award. And they could just take home the $5,000 People's Choice Award too.

Artists or their dealers, art centre coordinators and curators of public and private collections have only until 21 July to nominate via the Art Gallery of WA's website. The Awards will then be made and an exhibition of finalists open on 1 November.

Given that this initiative is part of the WA Government's extraordinarily generous 'Ignite' package for the arts - worth a total of $73m – there seems to be no time limit on these awards, which top the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award's (NATSIAA) top prize of $40,000 by 25%.

Comparisons are odorous, said Bottom in his Dream. But it is inevitable that Western Australians, at least, will be making some comparisons with other important existing prizes – headed by the NATSIAAs or Telstras in Darwin and the Xstrata Coal Emerging Indigenous Art Award in Brisbane.

And we have to too. For the Northern Territory's 25 year old grandaddy of indigenous art awards is not only being challenged from the West, but also from within. And the Xstrata Award is no more.

After what we're told was the scheduled three years of its life, Xstrata Coal has withdrawn from its generous sponsorship, which has not only handed prizes of $30,000 each to Jonathan Jones, Genevieve Grieves and now (last Friday, 11 July) Gunybi Ganambarr, but has also allowed the QAG to buy 17 artworks by participating artists. It's a joy to report that a traditional artist from Yirrkala in Arnhemland has finally got the guernsey in the Award's final year – he featured earlier on AAD in Annandale Gallery's Young Guns show. For there was a suspicion that the Queensland Art Gallery's new Modern Art space required works that looked as contemporary as the marvellous new building. Perhaps new QAG Director Tony Ellwood – with first hand Aboriginal art experience – has opened a door to different thinking?

Which brings us to the silver jubilee of the NATSIAAs, opening in Darwin on August 15. Some Desert artists, however will not be celebrating this landmark event. For they have withdrawn their work, selected by a panel of experts. Now all the indigenous artists that I've ever talked to in remote communities about what they call 'The Big Telstra' after it's long-time sponsor, regard selection as so vital a point in their career that they try to produce extra-special works and nag their coordinators to put them safely aside for entry. But, according to their spokesman, John Oster, the Executive Officer of Desart representing Desert art centres, they have “a difference of opinion over a number of conditions of the Award”.

Which surely begs the question: Is it the artists or their art centre coordinators who have studied the (unchanged) conditions for the Award this year and found them wanting?

For it is widely believed that as many as five Desert art centres are in fact taking action against their neighbours in the Western Desert – also pre-selected for the NATSIAAs - who have chosen to be represented by a commercial dealer rather than remain with the 'traditional' art coordinator model. We're talking about Irrunytju and Wanarn communities and the owner of Agathon Galleries, John Ioannou, who is seen to be rocking the boat by creating a direct link between relatively unworldly artists and the commerical world of the market-place.

Ioannou himself says, “If anyone can bring one shred of evidence of my ripping-off the artists, then I'll shut both my shops (in Sydney and
Melbourne) and walk away”. And indeed, there are now 5 or 6 other galleries selling Irrunytju and Wanarn work by such apparently contented (and inspired) artists as Tommy Watson, Kuntjil Cooper and Myra Cook. So it's possible that Ioannou is merely professionalising a community system that doesn't always function as it's intended to, as last year's Senate committee recommended – and the artists appreciate that.

The exciting young Bidyadanga artist, Daniel Walbidi was also pre-selected by the NATSIAA panel made up of Leilani Bin-Juda, head of the ATSI Program for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Tina Baum, Senior Curator of ATSI Art at the National Gallery in Canberra, and Steve Eland, Director of 24HR Art in Darwin. He was asked by Emily Rohr, his dealer in Broome whether he too wanted to withdraw: “But that's just /gardiya/ (white peoples') business” was his retort.

I should hasten to add that John Oster at Desart made no mention of these details, saying only that Desart respects the Award, and suggesting that he'd been in discussions at a “high level in the NT government” to ensure his continuing support for it. Interestingly, I see nothing in the conditions for entry to the new WA Prize that would deny artists represented by Ioannou or other dealers right of entry.

Sadly, despite the Museum and Art Gallery of the NT's best efforts to defuse matters by insisting that all the artists withdrawing sign statements of intent, this will be a hot topic of discussion at this year's event. Though I'm sure it won't have any influence on the final judges – curator Hetti Perkins and artist Judy Watson's judgment.

We'll find out at the most wonderful event of the Aboriginal art year – sunset over the warm Arafura Sea and a generous helping of traditional ceremony.

The last Xstrata Coal Emerging Indigenous Art Award is at the QAG in Brisbane until 12 October.

The 25th Telstra NATSIA Award opens on 15th August at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, and works will be on display until Sunday 26 October 2008. Plans are in train, too, to tour winners of the past internationally.

And finally, the closing date for the rich new WA Indigenous art prize is on Monday 21 July. Head for www.artgallery.wa.gov.au/events_programs/IndigenousArtAward2008.asp

The increasingly high-quality Togart Contemporary Art Award in Darwin - now in its third year for both Black and White artists from the Territory - is adding an NT tour this year. It's closed in Darwin, but hits Alice Springs in October, moving on to Tennant Creek in November and Katherine in December.

This year's winner was Djirrirra Wunungmurra - another fine artist from Yirrkala - who has inherited the very detailed working style of her father, Yanggarriny, incorporated into her set of Five Memorial Poles

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