2006 H. C. Coombs recipient

Mr Jon Rhodes, 2006 ANU H. C. Coombs recipient

The ANU Research School of Humanities, College of Arts and Social Sciences, is pleased to announce the 2006 ANU H. C. Coombs Creative Arts Fellowship has been awarded to Mr Jon Rhodes.

Mr Rhodes will be hosted by the School of Art, College of Arts and Social Sciences and the Australian Centre for Environmental Law, College of Law.

Jon Rhodes is known for his photographic work in many Aboriginal communities. The exhibitions Just Another Sunrise? (1976), Australia (1977), Kundat Jaru mob (1990) and the After 200 Years Collection (A.I.A.T.S.I.S. 1986-1990) involved themes of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal relationship to land. These exhibitions, and his later work, The Tanami Track and Beyond (1991) and Moving Country (1993) have all featured the use of the photographic sequence as a way of storytelling and as a method of conveying a sense of movement, change and the passing of time. Site Seeing (1992-1994), was a collaboration with painter Carol Ruff. The paired works showed the juxtaposition of the Arrernte and European cultures in the landscape of Alice Springs. In 1990, Rhodes lived at Kiwirrkura in Western Australia with a group of Pintupi he first met in 1974. The resulting photographs were shown in the exhibition Whichaway? that toured Australia from 1998 to 2002.

He is currently completing an exhibition that looks at the attempts to preserve and protect some of the important Aboriginal cultural sites in South Eastern Australia.

The exhibition, Whitefella Way, opens at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, in late September, 2007.

Jon Rhodes was born in 1947 and lives on the north coast of New South Wales.

The Creative Arts Fellowships were established in 1965 to encourage creative work in the arts in Australia. Renamed the H. C. Coombs Creative Arts Fellowship in 1996 in honour of former ANU Chancellor Dr H.C. 'Nugget' Coombs, the Fellowship embraces opportunities for performing, literary and visual artists on a three year rotation basis and is administered by RSH.