In 2021, M&G NSW’s IMAGinE Awards gave awards for both Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to NSW Aboriginal Culture, Heritage and Arts and for Excellence by an Aboriginal Curator

The ACHAA award for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to NSW Aboriginal Culture, Heritage & Arts

Aunty Euphemia Bostock

Euphemia Augustina Leoda Bostock is a proud Munanjali-Bundjalung woman and respected Elder.

Euphemia’s passion, creativity and cultural expression have long been directed towards the visual arts, working across many mediums including textile, printmaking, design and sculpture.

Together with her brothers, Lester and Gerald, Euphemia was a founding member of Sydney’s Aboriginal Black Theatre in 1972 and in 1987 she was one of the 10 artists who established Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative, for which she designed the Boomalli logo. The Co-operative’s existence and continued longevity have been an enabler for hundreds of Aboriginal Artists.

Her clothing designs were showcased in Paris at the Au Printemps Department Store exhibition – Australis Down Under. Other exhibitions include the Museum of Sydney’s Bamaradbanga (to make open) in 1999, and Tactility – two centuries of Indigenous textiles and fibre at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in 2003. In 1999 a section of Euphemia’s most recognisable work, the Possum Skin design screen print, was reproduced on an Australia Postage Stamp.

Euphemia’s works are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Powerhouse Museum and the National Museum of Australia. In 2001 Euphemia produced a collaborative Reconciliation Sculpture with artist Jan Shaw for Macquarie University’s Sculpture Garden.

A survey exhibition celebrating the work and life of Euphemia Bostock, entitled Made with Love and curated by Dr Bronwyn Bancroft was displayed at Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative in Leichhardt.

The 2021 ACHAA award for Excellence by an Aboriginal Curator

Laura McBride
Unsettled
Australian Museum

Laura McBride is a Wailwan and Kooma woman and Director, First Nations at the Australian Museum. McBride’s curatorial vision for Unsettled advocates for First Nations-led and informed approaches to exhibition development, promoting respectful, culturally appropriate and accurate representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in museums. Curated as a ‘right of reply’ to 2020’s 250thanniversary of James Cook’s East Coast voyage, Unsettled is an example of national truth-telling around the role of Cook in contested histories between First Nations and non-Indigenous Australians. Unsettled sees Australia’s oldest public museum give its influential platform to McBride to represent First Nations peoples in response to Australia’s foundational history.

A photo of the exhibition is pictured.

Other 2021 Nominees

Matt Poll | Chau Chak Wing Museum: Ambassadors and Embassies
Warwick Keen | Shoalhaven Regional Gallery: the TERRA within
Marika Duczynski | State Library of NSW: Dyarubbin