Showcasing the very best Australian Indigenous art from around the country, from emerging and established artists.
The Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) exhibition captures the attention of the nation, with an inspiring breadth of work from emerging and established artists.
Each year NATSIAA sees an increasing variety of art forms and media, collectively demonstrating the richness and diversity of current contemporary Indigenous artistic practice, and the pre-eminence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices, nationwide, within the visual arts.
NATSIAA 2020 Finalist Artist Profile – Jenna Lee
Based in Brisbane, Jenna Lee is a prominent young artist whose trajectory is rapidly rising. For NATSIAA, she has created an artwork in response to the 250-year anniversary of Lieutenant James Cook’s arrival. The work, titled ’HIStory Vessels’, looks to reclaim agency of historic representation of Aboriginal people in Australia. These vessels are created from deconstructed pages of the Ladybird history book ‘The Story of Captain Cook’. Jenna’s artwork was inspired in- part by an artist residency in the UK. The artist explains: ‘Cook is a powerful and enduring symbol for the omnipresent, white, patriarchal, narrative and its continuing assertion of power over First Nations stories. I aim to take this narrative and reconstruct it as a story of personal and cultural resilience, beauty and strength.’
Jenna Lee – Artist Website
The Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards – Website
