Naomi Hobson

Naomi Hobson is a multi-disciplinary artist who resides on the banks of the riverbeds where her grandparents were born. Her residence is an old tin shed that was once her village church.

Her colourful abstract compositions act as a link between individuality and a shared identity. Her continual inspiration for her painting is the vast traditional lands of her ancestors surrounding the town of Coen in Queensland and her culture. Recently, Hobson has been inspired by the rich cultural diversity she witnessed firsthand while exploring village life, rural farmlands and the organised urban chaos throughout Southeast Asia. Hobson uses photography to give an insight into the real-life characters in her community that are mostly unseen and misrepresented in mainstream viewpoints of Aboriginal Australia - while her ceramics are a creative manifestation of her cultural spiritual belief system.

Coen is a small township of 300 people at the bottom of the McIlwraith Ranges (part of the Great Dividing Range) surrounded by the east coast of Cape York Peninsula, rainforest and open wooded country, with many river systems that snake down to the northern section of the Great Barrier Reef. The local clans include Kaantju, Umpila, LamaLama, Ayapathu, Wik Mungkan and Olkola.

The landscape of Coen is also imbued with a marked political history. Since European settlement Aboriginal people have maintained a connection to their country through working on pastoral properties. Hobson’s grandfather was employed as a stockman for a European family, while other local indigenous people worked as farmhands (cooking, cleaning, gardening, baby-sitters) for no financial reward. Further, Hobson’s family have been active in indigenous land rights and reform movements in the effort to return traditional lands and on social and economic reforms to her Cape York community of Coen. Through her art, Hobson continues her family tradition of political and social engagement. Every brushstroke expresses the innate embeddedness of cultures and country in her paintings. However, this specific link to place is brought about through a keen sense of her own individuality. 

Hobson states:

I create ART in my own personal space where I feel most comfortable including my back veranda, on the streets of Coen, in the dry riverbeds, on the banks of my childhood fishing places as well as at the campsites that my families have lived and spent time for thousands of years. I will take time to look at the miniature things, the tiny little things that nature hides.

My aboriginality is what grounds me. Through art I get to freely express all of this. I can share my creative freedoms in a contemporary way. 

My style also reflects my individuality... I want my work to tell my stories in an innovative way, I want to introduce new work, to maintain a point of difference, I am wary to re-define and not recycle. 

While Hobson is quick to point out she has been exploring her art practise since her teenage years, in 2007 Hobson commenced her journey and now her work has been acquired by national and regional institutions including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Bendigo Art Gallery, Shepparton Art Museum, HOTA, Home of the Arts, Surfers Paradise, Caloundra Regional Gallery, Caloundra, Redcliffe Art Gallery, Redcliffe, Moreton Bay, Araluen Arts Centre: Art Galleries and Theatre, Alice Springs, Cairns Performing Arts Centre, Cairns, Cairns Art Gallery. Hobson’s work is held in significant public and private collections nationally and internationally.