Rosella Namok facts for kids

Rosella Namok (born 19 May 1979) is an Indigenous Australian artist from Lockhart River, Queensland. She is known for her amazing paintings. Rosella learned art in high school. She also learned printmaking and other art skills through a community art project in 1997. This project helped start a group of artists called the Lockhart River Art Gang.

Rosella Namok is famous for her paintings. She won the 2003 High Court of Australia Centenary Art Prize. By 2007, she had shown her art in eighteen solo exhibitions. These shows were held in Australia and other countries.

How Rosella Started Her Art Career

Rosella Namok studied art when she was in high school. In 1995, a special art program started for young people in Lockhart River. Fran and Geoff Barker, who had experience in teaching and design, ran this program. Rosella was one of the first students to learn printmaking with them.

In 1997, Rosella and other artists took some of their prints to an art show in Canberra. Important art experts, Betty Churcher and Margo Neale, saw their work. They bought some prints for the Queensland Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Australia. This was a fantastic start for the group, which became known as the Lockhart River Art Gang.

The Lockhart River Art Gang is special because it's an Indigenous art group with young members. This is different from other art movements, like Papunya Tula, which often started with older, traditional leaders. Rosella's art shows how diverse and different modern Indigenous art can be.

Rosella's Awards and Recognition

When she was 21, Rosella Namok won the Australian Heritage Commission's Lin Onus Youth Award. This award was for Indigenous art. Her winning painting was called Kungkay and Yiipay in Salmon Season. The judges said the painting captured "a fleeting, inspired moment." It showed a special moment in a lasting pattern.

In October 2003, Rosella's large painting, Today Now... We All Got To Go By The Same Laws, won the High Court Centenary Art Prize. This painting had nine parts. Justice Gleeson from the court said it was a "bold, beautiful, confident and contemporary" artwork. It showed how modern laws grew from Aboriginal history. Later that month, The Bulletin with Newsweek magazine named Rosella as one of Australia's ten "brightest, most creative" people in arts.

Rosella is a very busy artist. By 2007, when she was 28, she had already held eighteen solo art shows. These shows were in Australia and in other countries like New York and Berlin. She is seen as an important Australian artist today. Her artworks are very popular and sell for high prices.

Rosella Namok has a partner named Wayne Butcher. They have two children. Her son Isaiah was born in September 1997. Her son Zane was born in March 2001. Rosella lives in North Queensland. However, Zane was born in Sydney. Rosella had traveled to Sydney to enter a painting for the Wynne Prize. But she went straight from the airport to the hospital to give birth!

Where You Can See Her Art

Many art galleries and museums own Rosella Namok's paintings. Here are some of them:

• Art Gallery of New South Wales
• Art Gallery of South Australia
• Art Gallery of Western Australia
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
• National Gallery of Australia
• National Gallery of Victoria
• Queensland Art Gallery
• Adelaide Festival Centre
• Federal Court of Australia
• Kluge-Ruhe Museum, University of Virginia
• High Court of Australia

Awards Rosella Has Won

• 2000 – Lin Onus Youth Award, Australian Heritage Commission's Indigenous Heritage Art Awards
• 2003 – High Court of Australia Centenary Art Prize

See also

• Contemporary Indigenous Australian art