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Media Release - Artists Celebrated at 6th Annual National Indigenous Arts Awards - 27 May 2013
Media Release - Artists Celebrated at 6th Annual National Indigenous Arts Awards - 27 May 2013
The Australia Council for the Arts is the Australian Governments arts funding and advisory body
Rhonda is Pitjantjatjara and a photographic artist from the community of Amata in South Australia. Soon after starting a job as an arts worker at the local Tjala Arts Centre in January 2012 she discovered her love of photography and devoted herself to its practice. Rhondas work is about her family, her community and her country, says Lee-Ann. It attracted attention as soon as she started to show it, receiving the inaugural Desart Annual Aboriginal Arts Worker Prize 2012, for her series entitled My great grandmothers country. Its a joy to support this emerging artist who will undoubtedly create something wonderful from the opportunity, says Lee-Ann. The Dreaming Award comes with a prize of $20,000 which Rhonda will use to study photography at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney under the mentorship of photographer Nici Cumpston. After spending a year developing new work and her practice Rhondas works will be displayed at a solo exhibition at the Outstation Gallery in Darwin and at Gallery Gabriella Pizzi in Melbourne. Fellowship recipient Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello is a Southern Arrernte woman. She is an awardwinning poet, writer, and visual artist as well as an academic, teacher and community leader. In 2008 the Adelaide-born artist, now resident in Canberra, worked with glass for the first time and was immediately hooked on the medium. Since then she has become known for her extraordinary evocations of traditional weaving in hot blown glass. Jennifers Fellowship will allow her to undertake an extensive program of glass blowing, kiln work and coldworking to create a significant body of 70-90 pieces based on traditional Aboriginal woven eel traps, fish traps, baskets, fish scoops and dillibags. She will also travel to the US in mid-2014 to participate in advanced skills workshops at Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle and the Corning Museum of Glass Studio in New York State, and to attend the Glass Artists International Conference. Richard Frankland plans an ambitious musical based on Indigenous Australian history, to be developed with the assistance of his two-year Fellowship. Richard has written, directed and produced more than 50 film and video projects. As a musician he formed The Charcoal Club and once supported US star Prince. His work as a field officer with the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody inspired his award-winning play Conversations with the Dead. A Gunditjmara man raised in south-western Victoria, Richard Frankland has long been recognised for his passionate advocacy of social justice in writing, film and music. Now he plans to combine the three art forms to tell the story of Indigenous Australians from invasion to today in a stage musical to be offered to theatre companies in 2014.
Media contacts Cameron Woods 02 9215 9030 | 0412 686 548 c.woods@australiacouncil.gov.au
The Australia Council for the Arts is the Australian Governments arts funding and advisory body