Arrernte and Kalkadoon artist Thea Anamara Perkins is this year's recipient of the La Prairie Art Award, an annual award presented through a partnership between the Art Gallery and the Swiss skincare brand La Prairie. The award supports Australian women artists through the acquisition of new work and the opportunity to travel overseas to attend the Art Basel international art fair. Curator Isobel Parker Philip met with Perkins in her studio.
Isobel Parker Philip (IPP): What was your path to becoming an artist?
Thea Anamara Perkins (TAP): It was a bit of a roundabout path but I have always drawn, ever since I was a kid. For me it was always a natural way of responding to the world and expressing myself, a way of taking abstract ideas and emotions and articulating them. Drawing gave me an understanding of shade, but I really fell in love with painting because of the colour science. There really is a whole world in paint and mixing colour, understanding images and light. So, painting has had a really strong pull for me.
IPP: Can you tell us about the photographs your paintings are based on? What prompted you to start working with them?
TAP: I often paint from photographs, in particular my family archives. What drew me to these images and gave me such a strong compulsion to paint them was that they formed this really clear and distinct contradiction to a lot of the misrepresentations and misinformation I was seeing in the media about First Nations people and First Nations families. To me, they reflect the love and strength and support in our community. We have survived, and our culture is still really strong. So it was an important thing for me to delve into these images and share them.
IPP: You have such idiosyncratic stylistic mannerisms - the way you work with line, form and colour is so distinctly yours. Have you always painted figuratively, using the kinds of methods you use now?
TAP: With my painting practice, one thing I learned to lean into was compulsion. I painted a range of things, but I'd always come back to these photographs, and was being guided in many ways by what I enjoyed …. I enjoyed playing with colour, line and experimentation. Lately, one of the things I've been especially interested in is contrasting a flat, graphic style with a looser, more textural style. Playing with the technical elements of painting has an interesting effect on things like atmosphere and mood, which are potent in these kinds of photographs. There's an almost universal quality to them, and I think that it can be expressed in paint.
IPP: Can you describe the works the Art Gallery has acquired through the La Prairie Art Award?
TAP: One of the works is a painting of my sister Madeleine on her birthday surrounded by family at the exact moment the candles are being lit on her birthday cake. Another is a beach scene of my grandfather Charles, my mum Hetti and my uncle Adam in the late '60s, early '70s. I think that what drew me to this image is that kind of snapshot quality. It's not formal - the horizon is slanting to the side, but it has this wonderful immediacy and it's got that high summer feeling. You can see the love and joy, which is really beautiful.
IPP: One interesting element of your work, which is evidenced in this selection of paintings, is that you often move between different time periods, exhibiting works together that reference very different moments in time. How do time and memory function in your practice?
TAP: I've always naturally jumped around in time. There can be a huge expanse of time between images I'm working on. Even if I wasn't present at the time of a photograph being taken, all the paintings have a similar sense of intimacy to me. I think that it's tied to the strong storytelling in our family. The storytelling in our family makes me feel that all these people, at all the times in their lives, and all of these events are really familiar. I've come to consider this storytelling like the belief system that is often called the Dreaming. It's a stacked notion of time, where things are all happening simultaneously, and something from a long time ago isn't at odds with something happening now. My paintings also kind of slide into that dynamic storytelling.
IPP: In the way you complicate temporal distinctions you're also working with
photography's capacity to isolate particular moments in time.
TAP: What interests me about photographs is the way that they pause a moment in time. They offer an opportunity to meditate on that moment. I also find it interesting to try and capture the intangible elements that exist in photographs, whether it's a mood or expression or feeling; the tricky process of trying to preserve something intangible from a moment that is no longer accessible because it's long gone. To have that record is really significant, and I think that in some ways it does make images have an almost eternal resonance. I came across a term in psychology which is a 'glimmer' - the opposite of a trigger. It's something that gives you a sense of belonging, connection and safety. It really resonated with me in what I was trying to achieve in my works. When we talk about First Nations people, *glimmer' is also really beautiful because it's not only a phenomenon of
light but in art something glimmering could also connote a kind of spiritual power. I think that this idea of light is beautiful because it's omnipresent and it's one of the guiding or fundamental parts of photography and obviously is integral to painting as well. I think this idea of glimmer is something that infuses a lot of my process.
IPP: What does it mean to you to have these works enter the Art Gallery's collection?
TAP: It's wonderful to have these works enter the collection. They're special to me so this is a beautiful place and home for them engage with a lot of people. Hopefully they can reach many audiences and engage with a lot of people.
IPP: How do you feel about being the second recipient of the La Prairie Art Award, which celebrates contemporary woman artists?
TAP: I'm really honoured to be the second recipient to have that support of the La Prairie Art Award, especially as a First international scale in the arts. It really is invaluable Nations artist. It is amazing to have that Support and I think it's crucial to support artists. I really resonate with supporting women artists and striving to achieve gender parity in the collection, so I think it's wonderful and I'm really honoured.
IP: What are your plans for the residency component of the award?
TAP: I'm really excited by the international residency. It’s going to give me the opportunity to extend my practice, but also give me room to think and connect with what’s going on at an international scale in the arts. It really is invaluable to have that support.
Isobel Parker Philip,
Senior curator, contemporary Australian art, Art Gallery of NSW
Thea Anamara Perkins’ works acquired through the La Prairie Art Award are on display in The National 4: Australian Art Now, South Building, lower level 2, until 23 July, free
