Aboriginal Collective proppaNOW Wins Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice

The Vera Checklist Centre for Artwork and Politics has introduced Australian Aboriginal artist collective proppaNOW as the receiver of the 2022–24 Jane Lombard Prize for Artwork and Social Justice. The Meanjin/Brisbane–based collective was decided on for the honor, which is attended by a $25,000 funds prize, for its  2021 exhibition “OCCURRENT AFFAIR,” at the University of Queensland Artwork Museum, showcasing new and recent is effective by its members and addressing “current sociopolitical, economic and environmental concerns while celebrating the strength, resilience and continuity of Aboriginal tradition,” according to a curatorial statement.

Voting unanimously in their favor was an award jury chaired by Simone Leigh, who won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Biennale, and moreover comprising Carin Kuoni, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Wanda Nanibush, and Rasha Salti. In a joint statement, the jury customers praised proppaNOW for its attempts in pushing again against “the invisibility of urban Aboriginal modern artwork,” noting that it has “broken with anticipations of what is good (‘proppa’) in Aboriginal artwork established a new sovereign house for 1st Nations artists internationally outside the house colonial stereotypes, wishes for authenticity, and capitalist capitulations and opened new political imaginaries.”  

The Jane Lombard Prize, which honors superb achievements in art and politics and acknowledges artworks that advance social justice, took as its topic this 12 months “Correction.”  proppaNOW, which was founded in 2003 to deliver focus to urban Aboriginal artists and to combat the conventional expectations placed on this kind of artists by colonizers, was 1 of five finalists for the prize, alongside Colectivo Cherani for Cherán Cultural Center Khalil Rabah for The Palestinian Museum of Normal Background and Humankind KUNCI Research Discussion board & Collective for School of Improper Education and learning and The Africa Cluster of the A further Roadmap School. The collective’s project will be exhibited at New York’s Vera Checklist Centre next tumble.

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