Design and Art Australia Online

Nikki Carabetta was born in Kellerberrin, a small town east of Perth in Western Australia, in 1964. Carabetta’s great-grandfather on her father’s side was a Brinkin man from the Northern Territory who was removed with his sister to Western Australia as a child. He remained in Western Australia and ultimately married a Yammagi woman, and thus Carabetta identifies as both Yummagi and Brinkin, with ancestral country in both the Western Australian wheatbelt and the Darwin region of the Northern Territory. For the first seven years of her life, her family lived between a number of small towns in south-western Western Australia, moving according to where employment was available to Carabetta’s father, who worked as a shunter and then gang leader on the Commonwealth railways. However the family’s transient life was also due to her father’s quest to learn more about his heritage and to find his family. After spending time in Brisbane and Rockhampton in Queensland, Carabetta’s father traced his ancestry to the Brinkin people and the family moved to Darwin in 1974. Carabetta would go on to live between the Kullaluk community in Darwin and the cattle station town of Peppimenarti until she was eighteen. In her early adult years she lived in Brisbane, where she studied nursing; Perth, where she worked in the Aboriginal Unit at Murdoch University; and Sydney, where she studied Law at the University of Sydney, and worked for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission and the Aboriginal Legal Service. In 1996 she moved to Adelaide.
Carabetta’s art practice has been informed by a range of experiences. She began dot painting with elder relatives and community members while she was living in Peppimenarti and Darwin as a child. While living in Sydney in the 1980s her engagement with the urban Aboriginal political movement exposed her to forms of politically expressive Aboriginal art being produced there at the time. However it was only in 1998 that she began to paint regularly. Carabetta’s employment as an Aboriginal cultural awareness officer for Normandy Mining and education officer at the South Australian Museum was cut short when a cycling accident prevented her from working, and led to her discovery that she suffered from fibromyalgia. She took up painting as a form of diversional therapy, and after being encouraged to further her art education by friends and family, enrolled at Taoundi College in 2004. She went on to complete an Advanced Diploma in Visual and Applied Arts in 2007.
Carabetta predominantly works with acrylic paint on canvas and wood, and she regards art as a means to maintain and share her culture. Stylistically she has been influenced by the Aboriginal artists that she has observed and been mentored by in the Kullaluk community and in Peppimenarti, as well as Op art which she encountered while studying at Taoundi College. Her works reflect upon her personal journey, Aboriginal identity, and political issues pertinent to Aboriginal people. They are inspired by childhood memories, her sense of attachment to different parts of Australia, and her sense of affiliation with the urban, rural and remote Aboriginal communities with which she has lived over the course of her life.
Carabetta has participated in a range of exhibitions since she completed her study, including 'Tappa Tautta’ at the South Australian Museum (2006) and 'Towards Reconciliation’ at Gallery M (2008). She held a solo exhibition at the Elderton winery as part of the South Australian Living Artists Festival (2008) and exhibited her work alongside that of Robert Dodd in 'Coming Together’ at the Town Hall and Library of Norwood for Reconciliation Week, 2008. In 2007 she was awarded the inaugural Indigenous Artist Award at the Campbelltown Art Exhibition in Adelaide, and was commissioned to paint a fibreglass dolphin titled Yerlo Parri for The Port Festival 'Big Splash’ event, which was acquired by the Port Adelaide Information Centre. Carabetta regularly participates in the Art at the Hart Artists & Celtica Festival as a selling artist and also sells her work through the Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute Shop. Besides continuing her art practice, she conducts workshops at the Living Kaurna Cultural Centre in Adelaide.

Writers:

Fisher, Laura

Date written:

2011

Last updated:

2011