Born-and-bred Darwin artist Joshua Bonson has exploded onto the national art stage with work that’s been represented in one of the country’s top art awards and has taken out another. Collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Kerry Stokes, W.A, Toga Group and Art bank, NSW include his work, as do many private collections both nationally and internationally.
Joshua is a painter who shares stories of his Indigenous heritage through his work.
Life’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for the 24-year-old since he finished high school. He only started experimenting with paint in his senior school years, creating textured black-and-white paintings in acrylics in what he describes as a 3D style. ‘I try to get a lot of off-the-page detail in my work’, says Joshua.
He applies his paint thickly in his own version of a dot-painting technique, creating works that are contemporary in appearance yet embody age-old Indigenous traditions and meanings. ‘The idea is to recreate the scales of a saltwater crocodile, which my grandfather tells me is my totem. The armoured skin of the reptile is shown by the built up serrations of the paint and other materials applied by hand or directly from the tube’. But it also works on different levels – ‘It can be read as a close-up of a reptile’s skin, and as a landscape both seen from a distance and as close-up details of rocks and sand’.
For two years running, at age 18 and 19, Joshua was the youngest-ever finalist in the prestigious Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award held annually at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. At 22, he won the Togart Contemporary Art Award in 2011 for his work Skin. This year Joshua is a finalist in the 30th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, finalist in the City of Albany Art Prize 2013 and Winner of the Top End NAIDOC artist of the year 2013.
Culture plays an important part in Joshua’s life and his art. Through his art, he is trying to rediscover his lost family culture and establish his place within it. ‘My great grandmother was from Badu in the Torres Strait Islands and her eldest son is my grandfather, Donald Bonson, senior. He is the inspiration for my work. He says everything is connected, the land, the water and us. Like the crocodile we are saltwater people with an ancient lineage.’
Joshua also traces his ancestry through his great-great grandmother Dolly Bonson, a Jawoyn woman from Katherine who was also known as Bett-Bett the servant girl featured in We of the Never-Never and the main character in The Little Black Princess books by Jeannie Gunn.
Born-and-bred Darwin artist Joshua Bonson has exploded onto the national art stage with work that’s been represented in one of the country’s top art awards and has taken out another. Collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Kerry Stokes, W.A, Toga Group and Art bank, NSW include his work, as do many private collections both nationally and internationally.
Joshua is a painter who shares stories of his Indigenous heritage through his work.
Life’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for the 24-year-old since he finished high school. He only started experimenting with paint in his senior school years, creating textured black-and-white paintings in acrylics in what he describes as a 3D style. ‘I try to get a lot of off-the-page detail in my work’, says Joshua.
He applies his paint thickly in his own version of a dot-painting technique, creating works that are contemporary in appearance yet embody age-old Indigenous traditions and meanings. ‘The idea is to recreate the scales of a saltwater crocodile, which my grandfather tells me is my totem. The armoured skin of the reptile is shown by the built up serrations of the paint and other materials applied by hand or directly from the tube’. But it also works on different levels – ‘It can be read as a close-up of a reptile’s skin, and as a landscape both seen from a distance and as close-up details of rocks and sand’.
For two years running, at age 18 and 19, Joshua was the youngest-ever finalist in the prestigious Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award held annually at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. At 22, he won the Togart Contemporary Art Award in 2011 for his work Skin. This year Joshua is a finalist in the 30th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, finalist in the City of Albany Art Prize 2013 and Winner of the Top End NAIDOC artist of the year 2013.
Culture plays an important part in Joshua’s life and his art. Through his art, he is trying to rediscover his lost family culture and establish his place within it. ‘My great grandmother was from Badu in the Torres Strait Islands and her eldest son is my grandfather, Donald Bonson, senior. He is the inspiration for my work. He says everything is connected, the land, the water and us. Like the crocodile we are saltwater people with an ancient lineage.’
Joshua also traces his ancestry through his great-great grandmother Dolly Bonson, a Jawoyn woman from Katherine who was also known as Bett-Bett the servant girl featured in We of the Never-Never and the main character in The Little Black Princess books by Jeannie Gunn.