December 5, 2020 - February 21, 2021
Clinton Naina has been awarded the Creative Victoria Award for Excellence at the 8th Koorie Art Show. His Artwork Landfill (2020) is exhibited in the Koorie Heritage Trust exhibition space, along side 120 other works by Koorie and Victorian based Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists.
Clinton Naina, a Meriam Mir man, has always carried with him a strong sense of justice and a willingness to take action to set things right. As winner of the Creative Victoria Award for Excellence in Any Media in The 8th Koorie Art Show 2020, he has produced a stunning new work that, not surprisingly, responds to many contemporary issues involving politics and the consequences of human activity.
The work Landfill (2020) is also a reflection on the past year of enduring COVID-19, and, for Naina, the long stretches of lockdown in Melbourne. As he says, the work is inspired by “the strange situation we have been living in”. The walks he has been doing within a five-kilometre radius of his home revealed that the most recognisable object linked to the pandemic – the disposable surgical face mask – has been much in evidence: disposed of carelessly without thought of where it might end up.
Andrew Stephens ‘Interview with Clinton Naina‘ 2021