Rosella Namok's - Leaving the Community - as featured in the Insights Exhibition

 


Rosella Namok, Leaving the Community, 1998, Screen print on paper, A/P, 68 x 96 cm. Reproduced with permission. © Rosella Namok, 2024. Photo by Through the Looking Glass Studio.

This year’s exhibition Insights: A selection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art from the James Cook University Art Collection, has been curated by the Library Special Collections team to highlight an exciting group of artworks in the James Cook University (JCU) Art Collection.  

This exhibition's final featured artwork is Leaving the Community (1998) by Rosella Namok (born 1979), an artist from the Kuuku Ya'u (Kanthanampu) and Aangkum language groups of the Lockhart River region. Lockhart River is a remote Indigenous community situated on the eastern side of Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland.  

Leaving the Community is a three-colour screen print produced by Namok when she was learning printmaking processes and developing her own unique form of creative and cultural expression as part of the Lockhart River Art Gang at the Lockhart River Arts Centre. 

The Lockhart River Arts Centre, established in the old hospital premises and refurbished with printmaking studios, was the product of a cultural retention and community development program strategy that engaged community members to participate in locally driven arts projects. 

"Initially conceived in 1995 as a means for providing work readiness experience across a range of fields, including visual arts, for post-primary students within the Lockhart River community, the Art Gang has evolved to become a vital group of experienced, talented artists who use art to tell the stories from their traditional countries." i

It was there that Rosella Namok and other members of the now famous Art Gang were supported in their artistic production by community teachers, elders and artists through a contemporary arts training and education program. In the program they were tutored in a range of mediums and processes from resident and visiting art teachers and artists from other parts of Cape York, Queensland, and Australia. 

"Fine art printmaking was the mainstay of early art production and the area in which Lockhart River artists were first recognised. Print techniques included linocut, screen print, etching, collagraph and waxprint. The Art Gang’s first interstate recognition was for their print work in The National Indigenous Art of Place Award in Old Parliament House, Canberra, in 1998, where they won The Community Endeavour Award." ii

The Art Gang, including other original members Fiona Omeenyo, Samantha Hobson, Silas Hobson, Patrick Butcher, Sammy Clarmont and Adrian King (whom have also gained a high profile with their work), also participated in residencies and excursions to other Cape York communities, regional centres and capital cities to learn about the business and production of art. 

"This spirit of innovation and self-determined enterprise in the areas of education and employment is the context for the origins of the Lockhart River Art Gang."iii 

The Lockhart River Art Centre’s small-scale enterprise initially drew attention and support from visiting government, education and service providers who drove, and flew, in and out of the small community.

"This constant flux of visitors was an integral part of the everyday life in Lockhart River, and is the subject of a printwork by Rosella Namok, titled ‘Going and Coming’ 1998 in one edition and ‘Leaving the Community’ 1998 in another." iv

A visitor to the Eddie Koiki Mabo Library on the JCU Bebegu Yumba Campus (Townsville)
viewing the artwork by Rosella Namok which features in the Insights Exhibition.

Rosella’s screen print illustrates this subject through symbolism inspired by the forms and lines used by her elders as they drew in the sand to describe things and concepts to her and others when they were growing up. The community is represented by the solid and contained maroon coloured form at the left of the image, with the various pathways leading to and leaving from the community, represented by the lines, just as tracks would appear in an aerial view of the dirt roads that lead to and from the township. 

"Namok’s later artistic developments in painting are an extension of the stylistic method developed in silk-screen printing. Silk-screen technique is based on the artist setting up a series of screens that build the image, and then pulling colour through the screens in successive stages… In her paintings, Namok works with layers of colour laid one upon the other and then pulls her marks through wet layers of paint, revealing the dried colour of the background beneath." v

From early in her practice, Rosella worked on themes and principles relating to the social organisation and dynamics of everyday community life. Rosella states,

“I mainly paint but also work with printmaking. My work is modern but sometimes I paint about traditional Aboriginal culture and stories in my own style. I paint about country and people around me ... about traditional culture... about things that happen ... things we do ... the weather ... our isolated Community. My recent paintings have been about how people live in our community and about country.”vi

This screenprint, from Namok’s Leaving the Community edition, was purchased from the Lockhart River Art Centre around 1998 by Professor Sabina Knight and donated to the James Cook University Art Collection for the Indigenous Education and Research Centre in 2023. Professor Knight wrote,

“This work was done by a young woman at the beginning of her career in Lockhart River - in many ways symbolizes the journey our JCU students are embarking on - many who have had to leave country to do so. I hope it serves to inspire and connect Indigenous students during their university journey.” vii

From 1998, Rosella Namok rose as a leading figure in The Art Gang. Since then she's had dozens of solo exhibitions, won numerous prizes and is represented by the Lockhart River Art Centre as well as other commercial galleries in Australia, United States of America, France and Switzerland.

"Rosella has been positioned in the public eye as an example of a new wave of contemporary / traditional painters but her work defies simple categorisation. Since her first solo exhibition in 1999 at Sydney’s Hogarth Gallery, Namok has risen to prominence to become almost a celebrity figure; for at twenty-three she was, anecdotally at least, the highest grossing Australian artist of her age." viii

Rosella Namok is a current artist member with Lockhart River Arts Indigenous Corporation and moves between Cairns (Gimuy) and her home community in Cape York where she works consistently as a painter. And she continues to go from strength to strength with her work. This month - 7 July 2024 -  Namok won the Rockhampton Museum of Art’s (RMOA) 2024 Gold Award (the richest painting prize in Queensland) for her work Old Gals Yarnin’ I-III.


i https://lockhart.qld.gov.au/arts-centre/
ii Our Way, Contemporary Aboriginal Art from Lockhart River Education Resource Kit produced by The University of Queensland Art Museum, 2007. p.13
iii Our Way: Contemporary Aboriginal art from Lockhart River, Butler, Sally. St Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press, 2007.p.46
iv Ibid, p.48
v Our Way, Contemporary Aboriginal Art from Lockhart River Education Resource Kit produced by The University of Queensland Art Museum, 2007. p.13
vi Artist Biography – Rosella Namok - provided by the Lockhart River Arts Centre, 2024.
vii Email correspondence with Professor Sabina Knight, 2023.
viii https://www.cooeeart.com.au/artists/namokrosel
ix Our Way: Contemporary Aboriginal art from Lockhart River, Butler, Sally. St Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press, 2007. p. 48


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