• With a delicate hand, Thea Anamara Perkins answers heavy questions about what it means to be Indigenous in contemporary Australia,...

    With a delicate hand, Thea Anamara Perkins answers heavy questions about what it means to be Indigenous in contemporary Australia, and how Aboriginal people and Country can and should be portrayed.

      

    Eight Views of the Telegraph Station is a personal meditation on the site known as the Old Telegraph Station in Mparntwe (Alice Springs), which takes the Western figurative landscape tradition and imbues it with the personal and spiritual associations of Country. Resisting the contemporary appetite for the “next” new and different idea - the series took inspiration from non-Western traditions of revisiting, most famously demonstrated by Hokusai or - literally closer to home - the painters of the central and western deserts. 

     

    The subterranean spring nearby is a source of precious, life-giving water and an analogy for the hidden cultural forces that surge through this site. It’s utterly beautiful. In some ways this corporeal landscape is a portrait.

  • acrylic on clayboard
    91.4 x 122cm
    $33,000.00
    Click for more info.
    SOLD

  • ‘I was  interested in my own compulsion to return to this subject. From 1913-1942, the Old Telegraph Station was the "Half-caste Institution" or The Bungalow as it is still locally known. This is where my Grandfather was born and his resting place overlooks. The Bungalow is somewhere my family and I visit without fail when travelling to Alice Springs.'

  • This place has a complex history and is the nexus for my own life-long journey deepening my connection with my culture. This body of work came about during lockdown, being unable to travel there, I felt a longing for country. I will always return to this subject, just like I will always return to Country.

     

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  • Bio.

    Bio.

    Thea Anamara Perkins is an Arrernte and Kalkadoon artist whose practice incorporates portraiture and landscape to depict authentic representations of First Nations peoples and Country. With a delicate hand, Thea answers heavy questions about what it means to be Indigenous in contemporary Australia, and how Aboriginal people can and should be portrayed.

    Thea’s Arrernte name Anamara describes a river and a Dreaming that runs north of Mparntwe (Alice Springs) – the place that keeps calling her back and has been the wellspring of art and activism for her family, and by extension, the nation. Perkins continues her family’s commitment to what she calls “strong and ready communication” and is part of an extraordinary dynasty of First Nations activists and creatives that includes activist Charles Perkins (her grandfather), Arrernte elder Hetti Perkins (her great-grandmother), curator Hetti Perkins (her mother) and acclaimed film director Rachel Perkins (her aunt).