Artist Anne Nginyangka Thompson has a lot to say, and so do her ceramic artworks.
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A pair of her clay vessels has won the 3D prize at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, Australia's longest-running and most prestigious awards for Indigenous art.
Titled Anangu History, the first pot is decorated with a monochrome landscape of rivers, trees, rocks and shelters, while the second features lurid bands of orange glaze depicting bitumen roads, cars, people and health clinics.
These are not just scenes but a story about thousands of years of traditional life and the changes wrought by colonisation.
"I'm saying to be careful because I'm standing in the middle watching two cultures banging each other - like hitting each other in the head," Thompson told AAP.
According to the traditional ways, families would travel together and share with each other - there were no choices to be made about how to live, the artist said.
But money created greed and brought so-called progress with cars, smoking, sugar and diabetes.
Thompson knows both the Western world and the realms of traditional cultural knowledge, often finding herself caught between them.
Her pots stand next to and apart from each other: hit them together and they might break apart.
Thompson is pleased to win the $15,000 Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Award but her main concern is to share the story behind the artwork.
"Hopefully somebody listens to what I have to say; this is a story, not just a piece of art... it has a strong knowledge to it," she said.
Thompson is especially worried about technology, which she feels has gone too far - instead of observing the skies and the sunset, people are watching phones, ipads and youtube, she said.
"That is not teaching anybody nothing, it's just ruining our way of living, taking control of your mind."
These issues seem a world away from where the artist grew up at Black Hill #2 in the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) Lands, her father the land rights pioneer Kawaki "Punch" Thompson, her mother Carlene a senior Ernabella artist.
She began making ceramics at school and worked at Ernabella Arts ceramic studio, becoming chair of the Ernabella Arts Board.
Importantly given recent controversies about artistic interference, Thompson (who usually hand-builds ceramics) had an arts centre worker form the raw vessels on a wheel according to her instructions but sees the finished works as her entirely her own.
"You got to make your own decision about what kind of pot you want, what is best for you, how you are going to focus on your work," she said.
The overall $100,000 Telstra Art Award announced Friday went to Thu' Apalech artist Keith Wikmunea, from Aurukun in far north Queensland.
The Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards are on display at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin until February.
AAP travelled with the assistance of MAGNT.
Australian Associated Press
