Grace Robinya, Raining at Laramba, 2021. Acrylic on linen, 91.5cm x 111.5cm. Courtesy: the artist and Tangentyere Artists.
This year’s Vincent Lingiari Art Award asks Aboriginal artists to reflect on their individual and collective battles for water rights and share their creative responses to the theme Ngawa, Ngapa, Kapi, Kwatja, Water.
“Water rights are land rights,” CLC chair Sammy Wilson told CLC delegates in 2019.
“The government gave us the land back but not the water. Water is the new land rights.”
Rights to land and water are fundamental to the social, religious, economic and political identity of Aboriginal peoples in the NT and beyond. Over the past 45 years the CLC has won back significant areas of land on behalf of traditional Aboriginal land owners but without access to safe, secure and adequate sources of water their very survival on this land is under threat.
This exhibition aims to both celebrate these achievements and send an urgent message not to take them for granted in a world where water rights are shaping up as a new frontier.
