Fiona Omeenyo, Dancing at full moon (detail), 2002. Screenprint on paper, 38 x 28cm. Mackay Regional Council Art Collection, gift of Geoff and Fran Barker through the Cultural Gifts Program 2006. Courtesy: the artist and Artspace Mackay, Mackay.

Rosella Namok and Fiona Omeenyo are leading figures in Cape York Peninsula’s Lockhart River, the site of one of Queensland’s most important contemporary art movements. The term ‘sandbeach people’ groups together five language and kinship groups of the region who came together in the 1990s to collaborate in their expressions of Country through art. For two decades, Namok and Omeenyo have sustained traditional cultural knowledge through bold and innovative visual languages.