Pop update of Seven Sisters story wins painting prize at Telstra indigenous awards
A contemporary pop culture update of the traditional Seven Sisters story from South Australia’s APY Lands has won one of the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards.
POP culture icons including superheroes, singers, film characters and comic actors are the unlikely subjects of the General Painting Award winner at this year’s Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.
Kaylene Whiskey, from Indulkana in South Australia’s far north APY Lands, won the $5000 category with Seven Sistas, her contemporary interpretation of the creation story based on a cluster of stars.
The overall $50,000 Telstra Art Award, also presented in Darwin last night (on Friday), was won by East Arnhem Land artist Djambawa Marawili for his bark painting Journey to America.
Whiskey said her work updated the Seven Sisters story, which tells of an ancestral being who takes on the guise of a man and relentlessly pursues seven sisters across the land and sky.
‘The Kungkarangkalpa (Seven Sisters) Tjukurpa is about sisters looking out for each other,” Whiskey said.
“I’ve painted seven strong women: Wonder Woman, Cher, Whoopi Goldberg, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, Catwoman, Dolly Parton and Tina Turner.
“They’re hanging out on the Iwantja Arts sign (at Indulkana’s art centre), hiding from the cheeky wati (man).”
The awards’ judges, who included new Art Gallery of SA director Rhana Devenport, said Whiskey’s work was an “irreverent interpretation” in which the artist “invents and casts her own heroic women onto an imaginary stage within her community”.
“By reclaiming televised pop culture idols she celebrates female empowerment and sisterhood.”
Whiskey also won last year’s national $40,000 Sulman Prize for subject painting, presented alongside the Archibald Prize by the Art Gallery of NSW, with a painting called Kaylene TV which also depicted Cher and Dolly Parton.
Marawili’s overall winner Journey to America is made from natural pigments on stringybark and reflects on his recent travels to the US promoting his Yolngu people’s philosophy.
Telstra NATSIAA winners and finalists’ works are on show at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin until November 3.
The other $5000 category winners are:
Telstra General Works on Paper Award:
Nyaparu (William) Gardiner (deceased), South Hedland, WA – Our Old People
Telstra Bark Painting Award:
Nonggirrnga Marawili, Yirrkala NT – Lightning strikes
Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Award:
Malaluba Gumana, Yirrkala NT – Rainbows in the Lilies
Telstra Multimedia Award:
Gutingarra Yunupiŋu, Yirrkala, NT – Gurrutu’mi Mala (My connections)
Telstra Emerging Artist Award:
Titus Nganjmirra, Gunbalanya, NT – Queen Elizabeth
