Dennis Nona

Dennis Nona is widely known as one of the most essential Torres Strait Islander artists.
Born on Badu Island in 1973 he was taught as a young boy the traditional craft of woodcarving. As his skills developed, he began to produce intricate linocuts, etchings and sculptures.
Dennis holds a Diploma of Art from Cairns TAFE, a Diploma of Visual Arts in Printmaking from the Institution of Arts, Australian National University, Canberra and is currently completing a Master of Arts degree in Visual Arts at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane.
You will find Dennis Nona’s artworks in the collections of most major Australian art institutions and 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 United Kingdom, and the Museum of American Indian Arts, USA.
Nona pioneered the development of the highly intricate linocut prints unique to the Torres Strait Islands. He has documented, in a visual form, the ancient myths and legends of his island and the wider Torres Strait that had previously been transmitted by oral storytelling and dance.
He uses a more graphic way of storytelling. Instead of a piece based on a single image like the traditional Torres Strait Islander art, he introduced many stories into his artworks as the mainland Aboriginal artists. Since this breakthrough, the intricate designs and bold figurative imagery created by printmakers like Nona, have given local culture a vital reinvigoration. Today they are central to a cultural revival, and elders now refer to them to help them to relate ancient stories to others.
Within Nona’s artworks, there is a celebration of island myths and legends, of how humans, animals, plants and landscape took their meaning from epic or magical events in the past. It was a culture where fighting was glorified, and warriors were held in high esteem. Legendary heroes wore distinctive local headdress and masks. They played the drums and used objects associated with their ritual ceremonies and dances. It was a culture of head hunters, cannibalism and raiding parties that attacked homes built in treetops. It was a society where men, women, sorcerers and witches came to their final grief by being transformed into sea creatures or cast into the sea to become the islands and rocky outcrops evident throughout the Western Torres Strait Islands today.
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.