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ROSELLA NAMOK (born circa 1979)
‘Para House’
Acrylic on canvas
184 x 132 cm

“Para house ... nice house ... big house ... nice garden. Like house next to Art Centre in Lockhart River. The nurses house. Nice shade trees ... grass cut all neat ... every time we have different nurses coming ... they do up the yard ... make sure they look after the place ... nice and tidy. You see them cut the grass and work in the garden. They all live in a nice, quiet end of town ... very peaceful. They call this street here ‘Para Street’ ... cause it’s where para (white-fellas) live. It’s quiet here at night cause para goes to bed early ... not like us ... we always stay up till late ... sometimes till daybreak ... then go sleep.”

PROVENANCE
Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane, painted 2001
Stock number RNGB 270301-5

Rosella Namok is the best known member of the Lockhart River Art Gang, a group of men and women under the age of thirty who for the last nine years have focused their skills and energies on painting, sculpture and fine art printing. The Lockhart River community of approximately six hundred people settled as a mission in the 1920’s and is situated 800 km north of Cairns on the east coast of Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland. A member of the Aankum language group, Rosella began painting as a child, helping her father to decorate with ochres the bodies of the dancers who performed at traditional ceremonies. Her current pictures include representations of these markings, along with symbolic patterns handed down by her ancestors and passed on to Rosella by her grandmother. In 1999 Rosella was nominated for the Young Australian of the Year in the ‘Arts’ section and in 2003 she was awarded ‘The Australian Centenary Medal’ for distinguished service to indigenous art and to the community. In the same year she also won ‘The High Court of Australia Centenary Prize’, sponsored by the Australian Bar Association to celebrate the centenary of the High Court of Australia in Canberra.

REPRESENTED
National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Victoria
Art Gallery of South Australia
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of Western Australia
Queensland Art Gallery
Flinders University, South Australia
The Kluge-Ruhe Collection, USA