Thea Anamara Perkins is a finalist in the 2024 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards (NATSIAA) with her painting Return.
‘Return is inspired by a slide of my family on the road to Mparntwe (Alice Springs) in the seventies, bogged after rain.
This work takes a small jewel-like record and in the process of enlarging extrudes and amplifies its essence. Playing with the icons of red centre sands, the road stretching as far as the eye can see and the Holden Kingswood. In this work I was particularly interested in the contrast of detail and rhythm. There is a sense of the distilled eternal. A moment of being for the central figures. It is a departure in bringing together my landscape and portraiture practice, as well as a consolidation of what I learned during an international residency last year.
It speaks to maintaining connection within the shifting sands of history. There is something integral to First Nations experience in the sometimes epic journey to return to country; but also a shared universal experience of going home.'
'MAGNT acquired this work from the 2024 Telstra NATSIAA. Return joins another remarkable painting by Thea Anamara Perkins in the MAGNT Collection. MAGNT is delighted to care for this work that transports viewers through time and memory to her family's road trip back to their Country and acts as a portal for each of us to return and revisit our own memories of family, travels and Country.'
Finalists exhibition 22 June 2024 until 27 January 2025
Awards Ceremony Friday 9 August
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
Artwork:
Thea Anamara Perkins
Return, 2024
acrylic on clayboard
90 x 120 cm
