Design and Art Australia Online

Verna Nichols is a Tasmanian Aboriginal artist who is also a descendant of the Bunurong people of Victoria. She works in the media of painting, silkscreen printmaking, ceramics, drawing, weaving and kelp work. Nichols was born on the 11th August 1947 on Flinders Island, Tasmania, and spent the next seven years on the island before moving to Hobart with her family. She has also lived in Melbourne and Strahan, Tasmania but returned to Hobart in 1997 where she still resides.

Nichols, a qualified Mothercraft Nurse, has also worked as a deckhand on a fishing boat among other things. Later she was employed as an Office Administrator for Strahan Engineering (in which she was also a joint partner); as a Trainee Curator in the Anthropology Department at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery; and as a Coordinator at the Hobart based Women’s Karadi Aboriginal Corporation and the Palawa Aboriginal Corporation.

She has only shown her work professionally since 1991, when she and her friend, Jeanymaree Caville, organised an exhibition at a local Strahan gallery. For this first untitled exhibition Nichols submitted works that included paintings, drawings and painted shells. Since 1975 Nichols has drawn (pen and pencil) and painted (acrylic on canvas and bought and found objects) images inspired by petroglyphs (rock carvings), marine life, dreams and personal and cultural memories, but it is for her kelp work that she has gained national attention.

In 1994 her cousin and well-respected basket weaver, Lennah Newson, began tutoring Nichols in kelp work and basketry – tutoring that changed the course of Nichols’ artistic career. No longer working only with painting and drawing, Nichols began exhibiting her kelp water carriers and woven baskets in such exhibitions as 'Tactility’ at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra (2003), 'We’re Here’ at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra (2004), and 'tayenebe: Works in Progress’ at the Arts Alive Gallery in Launceston (2007).

In May of 2006 the 'tayenebe’ project began. 'tayenebe’ is a partnership project with Arts Tasmania, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the National Museum of Australia. A series of workshops was conducted over more than two years across Tasmania, including Bruny and Flinders Islands. Workshop participants, including Nichols, were to exchange knowledge of, and learn to identify the native plants used in the traditional Tasmanian Aboriginal baskets. Some women who participated were learning the weaving technique known to Tasmanian Aboriginal women for the first time. These workshops provided the participants with a solid understanding of Tasmanian basketry and its place in Tasmanian history. It was planned that the workshops would culminate in an exhibition curated by Julie Gough, at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery during NAIDOC week 2009, followed by a two-year tour to South Australia, Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.

In 1999 Nichols gained a Certificate II in Silkscreen printing at Palawa Prints in Hobart. The teacher of this course was her daughter, Jacqui Langdon. Nichols’ dedication to this medium was recognised when she was chosen as one of a group of seven Tasmanian Aboriginal artists to participate in a cultural exchange to the Tiwi Islands in 1999; others in the group were Lola Greeno, Lennah Newson, Clowery Kennell, Megan Robertson, Delia Summers and Len Maynard. This exchange was organised by the Women’s Karadi Aboriginal Corporation with the aim of exchanging ideas and arts knowledge with local Tiwi artists. The outcome of this exchange was a collaboration on a large untitled painting which is now part of the Women’s Karadi Aboriginal Corporation Collection. For two years following this exchange, Nichols held the position of Senior Printer at Palawa Prints.

Nichols’ work was recognised at a national level when in 1993 she was a finalist in the first National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Art Award (latterly known as the National Indigenous Heritage Art Award), and in 2005 in the 22nd Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. She was an artistic participant at the Yeperenya Festival in Alice Springs in 2001, and the Women’s Law and Culture Camp at Ernabella, South Australia in 2004. Internationally she was recognised when, in 2008, Mr Geoffrey Wood of the Maritime Museum of Tasmania commissioned a kelp water carrier to be presented as a gift from Tasmania to the Director of the Brest Maritime Heritage Centre in France. This gift to France is an acknowledgment of the historical and continuing significance the sea and its treasures are to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community.

Whilst Nichols has achieved national and international recognition she has not been neglected in her home state where she has worked in the Aboriginal Affairs sector most of her life. She has taught arts and crafts at numerous schools, Aboriginal school camps and festivals. She has taught basket making for the Summer Ranger (National Parks) course at Mount Wellington, Hobart and has been the commissioned muralist for many schools throughout Tasmania. She has participated in the Moonah Arts Centre NAIDOC exhibitions organised and curated by Jennie Gorringe from 1996 to 1999. All this work (paid and voluntary) was recognised in 2001 when she was presented with a Local Hero Award from the City of Glenorchy Council, Hobart.

Nichols is represented in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Museum of Australia, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Living History Museum of Aboriginal Culture, Nicholls Rivulet, the Brest Maritime Heritage Centre, the Women’s Karadi Aboriginal Corporation and the South East Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation.

Writers:

Allas, TessNote:

Date written:

2008

Last updated:

2011

Status:

peer-reviewed