Artist Matilda Nona says winning the Holding Redlich Innovation Award at the 2024 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair Art Awards will help her progress her unique work, which uses natural pigments sourced from her Badu Island home. Photo: Lyndon Keane.
When artist Matilda Nona’s unique work speaks about her Country from its stretched canvas stage, it is impossible not to listen in awe.
The Badu Island artist uses natural pigments found on her Torres Strait home in her work, a technique that resulted in her claiming the $10,000 Holding Redlich Innovation Award at the 2024 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF) Art Awards on 25 July.
Ms Nona said while being recognised for her artistic innovation made her proud, the creativity had been born in part out of necessity due to the availability of conventional art supplies on the western Torres Strait island.
“Well, I’m really a printmaker,” she said about her work, which aligns serendipitously with the 2024 CIAF theme of Country Speaking.
“I’m a lino printmaker, but being on Badu, it’s hard for me to get supplies in … to meet deadlines, so this is what inspired me to go on Country, see what my people look at and what they use; we’ve got a lot of rock paintings on Badu, so that’s what I tried to revive, the old rock painting style.
“Winning the innovation award pushes me more, because I’m still creating; I’m still trying to find the ultimate thing.”
A self-confessed “scientist” with her artistic process, Ms Nona said her connection to Country and curiosity about the outdoors and materials around her meant her work was constantly evolving.
“I’m an outdoor person, so I’m always out on Country when I’m not working,” she said.
“I’m out camping, cooking, gathering and collecting so, yeah, I’m a scientist as well.
“This is only the second stage of the process; I’ve done works like this before with mud and ochres, and every time I’m doing it, I’m finding more and more … everything just coming together and more crazy ideas for me to do this better.”
Ms Nona was all smiles as she spoke to CIAF patrons about her displayed work at the Cairns Convention Centre on Friday but admitted she had been worried about how her self-styled paintings would be received by the artistic community.
“It’s a relief [winning the award], because I’ve been having really bad anxiety attacks leading up to today …. and that’s all come off me now; as you can see, my work is different and I invented it myself.
“This work is just about me being on Country; these are the colours of my Country.”
