Richest Indigenous art prize awarded

Multidisciplinary artist, Brian Robinson, of Waiben (Thursday Island), has been awarded Australia’s richest indigenous arts prize, the Western Australian Indigenous Art Award.

Robinson’s winning piece, Up in the heavens the gods contemplate their next move (secret charms are given to man) (2012), recalls a sweeping Renaissance fresco, artfully blended with pop-cultural references and traditional Torres Strait Islander storytelling.

The dark canvas is foreboding and surreal; an almighty tentacled deity rises from an abstract sea, da Vinci flying contraptions broach the bottom corner, a small Astro Boy flies determinedly through the clouds.

The judges cited the summoning of historical artistic influences as an impressive facet of Robinson’s piece.