Dennis Nona is widely acknowledged as one the most important Torres Strait Islander artists.Born on Badu Island in 1973 he was taught as a young boy the traditional craft of woodcarving. This skill has been developed and translated into the incredibly intricate and beautiful linocuts, etchings and sculptures created by the artist since the commencement of his art practice in 1989.His work can be seen in the collections of most of the major Australian art institutions and in several important overseas collections. These include the National Gallery of Australia; Queensland Art Gallery; National Gallery of Victoria; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Cambridge University Museum UK and the Museum of American Indian Arts, USA.The attraction of Nona's work lies in the way he has drawn on the rich traditions of Torres Strait Islander carving which he has transferred to linocut and more recently etchings and sculpture. Far more flexible in their visual reference and expressive means than that of traditional work from the Torres Strait Islands, his works are highly skilled compositions. Each work expresses a powerful materiality that comes from exquisitely crafted hand-made surfaces, a complex of finely chiselled hand made lines which are then coloured before printing.

Curator of Australian Prints at the National Gallery of Australia, Roger Butler, says that Nona's work represents a trend by artists to explore the physicality of the print making process instead of just the instant art making of digital processes: He comments: "He (Nona) sits there with a lot of lino and with a very sharp little chisel and cuts out those incredibly detailed little lines and gouge marks… That's really taking it back to the processes of (German Renaissance artist) Albrecht Durer, a simple technique that makes VERY complex images."

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Dennis Nona