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staffcontributor

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Kamilaroi artist, Jake Soewardie was born on the 15th October,1948 in Redfern NSW and has lived his whole life in Sydney. Although Soewardie has been creating art since 1969, he only began formal art studies in 1998 when he enrolled in Aboriginal Fine Arts at Kingswood TAFE. Soewardie began publicly exhibiting his work in 1999 in shows including 'Darug Coming Together’ at the Australian Museum in Sydney and 'Hartlines’ at the Joan Sutherland Centre in Penrith.

Known for his oil on canvas landscapes, Soewardie also works in the media of ceramics, printmaking, photography, charcoal, oil pastels, acrylic and mixed media. In July 2006 Soewardie exhibited at the Blacktown Arts Centre Development Space with artists from Corroboree Arts and Crafts Co-op Ltd and Papunya Northern Territory in a show titled 'Crossing Cultures: Indigenous Art from Western Sydney and the Western Desert’.

Soewardie won first prize for drawing at the 2nd Blacktown Acquisitive Art Prize, Blacktown Council in 2000 and was a finalist in the 2005 and 2006 NSW Parliament Indigenous Art Prize with King With No Kingdom and Three Heroes Lost in the Landscape respectively. Three Heroes was included as part of the 2006 art award NSW regional tour in 2007. Throughout his artistic career Soewardie has participated in many exhibitions including the annual Boomalli Members Exhibition for the years of 2002 to 2006, the 2003 and 2004 annual Milpra Indigenous Art Award at Liverpool Museum and the 2005 exhibition, 'Explorations of Landscape’ at Blacktown Arts Centre.

In 2005 Soewardie worked as an arts co-ordinator in workshopping and exhibiting the art from 100 students in an exhibition titled 'Beyond The Frame’ which was a project initiated by the NSW Department of Education. Soewardie also held a number of workshops in 2005 for Blacktown Council in conjunction with NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), working with children to paint 'possum boxes’ that were installed into the parks and reserves that fall under NPWS’s care. In 2006 he worked as a teacher of printmaking and ceramics with Aboriginal students from the Liverpool district of south-west Sydney. The works were all shown in the annual Milpra Aboriginal Art Award Exhibition held each year at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre. Soewardie has also been a Director and the Chair of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative.

In October 2006 Soewardie participated with the Corroboree artists including Danny Eastwood and Soewardie’s son James and visual artists from Papunya NT including Michael Jagamara Nelson in a printmaking workshop at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales (COFA, UNSW) under the guidance of printmaker, Michael Kempson. This workshop resulted in an exhibition titled 'Crossing Cultures II’ at the Australian Defence Force Academy Library in Canberra in November 2006 and at the re-opened Blacktown Arts Centre in April 2007. Blacktown City Council purchased four of Soewardie’s prints for donation to the Pataka Museum in Porirua City, New Zealand, a sister-city to Blacktown City Council. He also has works in the collections of Mt Druitt Hospital, and Blacktown and Penrith City Councils.

Writers:

Allas, Tess Note:

Date written:

2007

Last updated:

2011

Status:

peer-reviewed