National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards for 2024 won by Noli Rictor.

 

NATSIAA 2024: Noli Rictor wins top prize at National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.

Rictor, a Pitjantjatjara elder, won the Telstra Art Award for his painting of Kamanti in the north of the Spinifex Lands. It's the home of Wati Kutjara Tjukurpa (Two Men Creation Line), the story of a father and son water serpent making a journey through Country creating sacred sites along their way.

Very few details of the story are public, but Rictor came to know it because he travelled through the Country as a young man and drank from a waterhole at one of the sacred sites as a tjitji (child).

The judges for the prize, Kamilaroi curator Keith Munro, Kullilli/Yuggera curator Katina Davidson, and Wangkajunga cultural adviser Putuparri Tom Lawford, highlighted the work's scale, at 2.9 metres x 2 metres. They also complimented its composition as "an expression of the artist's command of painting and a visual representation of the artist's vast knowledge of Spinifex Country and Law".

"His expert use of colour and composition creates shimmering fields … At times the paint dances on the canvas' surface; disrupting the eyes' ability to focus, giving the work a truly mesmerising appeal from its painterly merits."

Rictor told ABC RN's Awaye!, through Riley Adams Brown, studio manager of his arts centre, Spinifex Arts Project: "Winning's made me really happy, really proud, and the money coming has made me even happier."