Indigenous Australian art collective proppaNOW has won the prestigious 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice, announced Friday evening in the United States. The prize will take the Brisbane-based group to New York next year for an exhibition and residency.
Founded in 2003, proppaNOW was created to give voice to urban-based Indigenous artists. Current members include Tony Albert, Richard Bell, Vernon Ah Kee, Jennifer Herd, Gordon Hookey and Megan Cope. The collective's work addresses social issues, commentary and politics, with a mission to ascribe to an Aboriginal aesthetic not traditionally recognized as Aboriginal.
Carin Kuoni, chief curator at The New School's Vera List Center for Art and Politics which awards the prize, said the artists' work enacts principles gaining traction globally and would galvanize arts and social justice communities in New York. She noted that proppaNOW examines injustice systemically by looking at institutions, power structures and social conventions.
The prize was awarded for the OCCURRENT AFFAIR exhibition, featuring diverse works such as Gordon Hookey's canvases with overt messages, Megan Cope's chrome and mirror installations, and Vernon Ah Kee's riot shields. Tony Albert said the works challenge the stigma still attached to Aboriginal art, noting that forming the collective helped institutions understand where their work fits.
Richard Bell, whose Tent Embassy replica is heading to the Tate in London, said there is significantly more interest in his work in Europe, partly because audiences there are not implicated in Australia's colonization. Albert added that international recognition has changed perspectives, showing that their art is about minority and periphery issues globally.
