Mackay artist’s work is the face of NAIDOC

Indigenous artist Matthew Humphries

Budding Mackay Indigenous artist Matthew Humphries has won this year’s national NAIDOC Week poster competition.

His artwork, Road to Change, will be displayed in schools, workplaces, and community organisations across Australia as a representation of what reconciliation means to the country in 2011, and supporting this year’s NAIDOC Week theme of “Change — the next step is ours”.

The competition judges described it as a standout. “His artwork embodies this year’s theme in a powerful way,” said NAIDOC Committee co-chair
Anne Martin.

But the modest artist insists it’s all a bit of a mistake, although a very, very nice mistake.

For a start, Matthew is an IT worker by trade. And secondly, this is the first time he entered the poster competition, despite some good intentions
in previous years.

“It’s definitely been a surprise,” he said. “I didn’t think that I was going to be much of a contender. When they rang, I thought they were going to say something like ‘thanks, but keep trying’.”

Road to Change depicts a First Australian family linking hands as they step out on the road to change.  They are proud of who they are, encouraged by what has already been achieved, and united in their goal to be change makers for a bright, new future.

Matthew built the artwork around this year’s NAIDOC Week theme of ‘Change — the next step is ours’. “I thought back about what that meant and how I could get some positive themes; to put in the positive,” he said.

“It all just came together. I must have changed that path seven or eight times, trying to get it right and the right words in it. Looking back after all that, I thought it was finished. That’s unusual for me — there’s usually something I want to change — but this time I knew it was finished.”

Matthew works at the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health Services in Mackay. He’s designed some of its t-shirts and done the artwork on brochures, but it’s a hobby.

Matthew’s win comes with a $5000 prize. There were more than 180 entries.

Matthew is the third Queenslander in a row to win the national NAIDOC Week poster competition. He follows in the footsteps of Sheree Blackley of Mount Isa (Unsung Heroes — Leading Through Example) last year, and Mackay-based Luke Mallie (Carrying on our culture) in 2009.

For more information about the artist and his winning entry, visit www.indigenous.gov.au