Queensland artist wins NAIDOC Poster Competition

Matthew Humphries with his winning artwork, QLD. Photo: Janeen Perkins.

The winner of the 2011 National NAIDOC Poster Competition finds new technology a powerful tool for expressing his ideas about the future.

Matthew Humphries’ winning artwork depicts a First Australian family linking hands as they step out on the path to change.

“The ‘legend words’ like native title, Sorry Day and Referendum 67 that I’ve embedded along the road in my digital art represent all the hard times, struggles and achievements that have laid the path for the next generation,” Humphries explains.

An IT and quality systems officer for an Indigenous health service in Mackay in northern Queensland, Humphries has only recently moved from painting in oils to using digital technology.

“I’ve just started dabbling in it,” he says. “It’s difficult – a completely different ball game.

“I’ll draw the design on paper then try to duplicate it onto a digital canvas. It has been quite a big learning curve for me but I am more than pleased with how it turned out.”

Humphries was originally inspired to paint by his Kamilaroi father from Moree in New South Wales and the countryside of the cattle property near Julia Creek in Queensland where he once worked as a ringer with other Aboriginal stockmen.

“It was interesting at Kalmeta Station because some of the Aboriginal men working out there had lived there all their lives. It was educational. It gave me a strong work ethic and appreciation for life itself.”

Humphries sold his first artwork at the age of 11, when a lady fell in love with an ocean scene he had painted for a school exhibition and bought it for $20.

Since then he has designed brochures, a health education booklet and NAIDOC T-shirts, as well as continuing to paint in his spare time.

New technology is also vital to Humphries’ broader goals for Indigenous Australians.

By improving the way health data is collected and collated, he is helping the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health Service Mackay determine more accurately what his community needs.

The data is used to develop comprehensive primary health care services and support programs that are high quality, culturally safe and easy to access.

“I think we are definitely moving in the right direction,” he says.

Humphries says his artwork sums up this year’s NAIDOC theme Change: the next step is ours by representing Indigenous Australians as “change-makers for a bright new future, bringing culture and the mainstream together to move forward.”