Power and poetry in Carbiene McDonald Tjangala’s Hadley’s Art Prize-winning work

His painting career is not yet 12 months old, but this Aboriginal artist has just won a $100,000 landscape art prize.

Carbiene McDonald Tjangala with his work Four Dreamings which has won the 2019 Hadley’s Art Prize. Picture: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES

AN indigenous artist whose career began less than a year ago has won a prestigious $100,000 art prize.

Carbiene McDonald Tjangala has been announced as the winner of the 2019 Hadley’s Art Prize for his canvas titled Four Dreamings.

The prize, presented by Hadley’s Orient Hotel in Hobart, is awarded for the best portrayal of Australian landscape.

His shimmering creation depicting four significant sites of Dreamtime stories held the attention of the judges with its “confidence, power and sense of poetry”, said one of three judges Susan McCulloch OAM.

Mrs McCulloch said the artist comes from a long line of cultural leaders and in his painting reflected the practices of those who came before him and their innovation within tradition.

“The piece’s quality of shimmer harks back to paintings of the artist’s forebears but brought into being in a completely new and unique way,” Mrs McCulloch said.

Mr McDonald Tjangala said he inherited the stories that his painting portrays from his father.

“These tjukurrpa are associated with a series of waterholes running between Docker River and Kata Tjuta,” he said.

Mrs McCulloch said the judges were impressed by the artist’s innovation and embodiment of confidence, power and its sense of place.

“While being deeply rooted in a particular place, this painting would stand up in the company of any art,” she said.

“You really have to see this work in person.”

Mr McDonald Tjangala lives at Blackwater Outstation, a homeland outside of the remote community of Papunya.

His stepmother is Martha McDonald Napaltjarri who was the daughter of Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, one of the most famous founding artists of the Western Desert school of painting that originated at Papunya in the early 1970s.

As well as the main winner, the Hadley’s Art Prize also gives four highly commended awards and a packing room prize (see below) as well as a People’s Choice Award to be determined by public vote.

Highly commended: Faridah Cameron’s Sky Song.

Highly commended: Tony Smibert’s Tao Sublime 5.

Highly commended: Betty Pula Morton’s My Country and Bush Medicine.

Highly commended: Philip Wolfhagen’s Approaching the Cusp.

Packing Room Prize: Nigel Hewitt’s Understory.