DREAMING OF MIND AND SOUL

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware that the following article contains details of people who have passed away and may cause distress.

THEA ANAMARA PERKINS

It’s been a couple of big years for Thea Anamara Perkins, the Sydney-based artist with a seasoned CV that warrants ditching the descriptor ‘emerging’. She’s already plumed her cap with feathers of distinction, claiming a second short-listing in the 2020 Archibald Prize after finalist honours as a first-time entrant in 2019 with a portrait of Christian Thompson. Perkins stripped the self-referential artist of his costume schtick and cast him afloat in sugary pink deserving of his self-described “feminine Virgo moon-rising energy”.

She won the Dreaming Award (for a young and emerging artist) in the 2020 First Nations Arts Awards, sharing the Sydney Opera House stage with such illustrious company as curator and artist-activist Djon Mundine OAM, who was honoured with the Red Ochre Award for Lifetime Achievement.

And bragging rights warrant for figuring as a finalist in the Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship, for scoring inclusion in the 2019 Tarnanthi Festival at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), and for counting among the anointed few granted residency at The Clothing Store Artist Studios in Sydney’s Carriageworks.

But for Perkins, an Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman whose aestheticism seeds between the polarities of Alice Springs and Sydney — the compass points for family — the most meaningful accolade came with the 2020 win of the 41st Alice Prize for her painting Tent Embassy.

Describing a moment of political and personal potency — said by prize jury member and director of the AGSA Rhana Devenport to “convey both familial tenderness and profound historic change in this country” — it is Perkins’ portrait of close family and the face of courage.

“The inspiration for my painting is a treasured family photo of my grandfather Charles Perkins and aunt Rachel Perkins taken during a land rights protest outside Old Parliament House in Canberra,” says the artist of her beloved activist “Pop”, who she remembers as devoting every waking hour to his people. “My grandfather was born at The Bungalow [then the Alice Springs Half-Caste Institution] in Mparntwe. This image is reflective of the way that politics was personal for my grandfather, and that he dedicated his life to the fight for