Winner announced for the $25,000 Kate Challis RAKA Award 2013

One of Australia’s most cherished Indigenous artists, Mabel Juli, has won the $25,000 Kate Challis RAKA Award 2013 for her refined, minimal painting Garkeny Ngarranggarni (Moon Dreaming).

A respected Gija elder, 80-year-old Mabel travelled from her home at Warmun in the East Kimberley to accept the award at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne.

The work is currently on show as part of the Under the sun: the Kate Challis RAKA Award 2013 exhibition at 

The judges said Ms Juli’s use of natural pigments conveyed the potency of country and the ancient, enduring essence of the Ngarranggarni.

“At the same time, the work communicates across many cultural symbols, presenting an interplay between various artistic forms and between many beliefs and traditions,” they said.

“It is poetic, sophisticated and deeply grounded in Indigenous tradition but also extends outward to suggest the complex relationships that exist between diverse cultural and natural human experiences.”

Garkeny Ngarranggarni (2010) was selected from a shortlist of diverse and innovative works by artists from remote, regional and urban Australia, including Teresa Baker (SA), Daniel Boyd (QLD/NSW), Hector Burton (SA), Timothy Cook (Tiwi/NT), the late Kunmarnanya Mitchell (WA), Alick Tipoti (TSI/Qld), Garawan Wanambi (NT) and Regina Wilson (NT).

“There is an exciting energy about both the individual works and between all the works as they collectively reflect on an intricate range of histories and cultures,” the judges said.

Mabel Juli was born in 1933 at Five Mile, near Moola Bulla Station in the East Kimberley in Western Australia. She currently lives in Warmun, an Aboriginal settlement near Turkey Creek, and was one of the first female ochre painters of the Warmun region. She is also a significant ceremonial singer and dancer. 

Ms Juli explains that she began painting with acclaimed Warmun artist Queenie McKenzie.

“I started painting when the old girl was here,” she says. “She was the one who taught me to paint. She told me, ‘You try that painting’, and I started to paint. I was doing that Karnkiny [Moon Dreaming]; that’s the painting I started with - because my mother and father told me that Ngarranggarni [Dreamtime] story. I was reminded of all those stories from my mum and dad—like Glingennayn Hill and the Old Woman Singing Out for Her Dog. Those stories come from my country [Springvale, south of Warmun].

“They used to take me out bush when I was a little girl—good size—and they told me all about those Dreamtime stories. And I always remember those stories. I got ‘em in my brain.

“I like painting; make me busy. It’s good to do painting all the time; work every morning, every morning, every day. I’m always busy—finish the work, the painting, and go home. Go to [Warmun Community]council meetings, go to court [as an elder]. I got to make money to get tucker for my grandchildren. I still think about Aunty [Queenie McKenzie]. When I do paintings, she tell me about stories.”

Ms Juli’s work has been included in group exhibitions including Garmerrun: all our country, Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide (2004); and Women of the East Kimberley, Tandanya: National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide (2002). In 1994 she received the Australian Heritage Commission Art Award. Her art is held in the collections at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, Perth.

The annual Kate Challis RAKA Award was established in 1988 by the late Professor Emeritus Bernard Smith to honour the memory of his late wife, Kate Challis. The $25,000 prize is offered to various artistic disciplines in a five-year cycle: creative prose, drama, scriptwriting, poetry and the 2013 category, visual arts.

Previous visual arts winners include Gali Gurruwiwi (2009), Ricky Maynard (2003), Brook Andrew (1998) and Lin Onus (1993).

Under the sun: The Kate Challis RAKA Award 2013, the exhibition of the finalists’ work continues at the Ian Potter Museum of Art until November 3, 2013.

www.art-musuem.unimelb.edu.au