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A beauty brand empowering women in contemporary art may seem a little left of centre, but MECCA’s recent collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria attempts just that. Rose of Sharon Leake writes.
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“My Aboriginality is what grounds me,” says artist Naomi Hobson. “I am representing my life in this collaboration. I see my rivers, my grasslands and the characters of my people. Through the brushstrokes I can see my Country.”
The Southern Kaantju/Umpila woman is the sixth artist chosen to adorn MECCA’s holiday campaign, the result of a collaborative venture between the Australian beauty brand MECCA and the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).
Now in its sixth year, the collaboration enables the NGV to acquire works by Australian female identifying artists with funds donated by MECCA founder and co-CEO Jo Horgan and MECCA Brands.
The venture financially supports these artists through the purchase of their work and ensures that they are represented in the collection of a major public gallery, giving them a voice within the institution as well as the artistic culture it presents. “Through art I get to freely express my creative freedoms in a contemporary way,” explains Hobson. “Working with MECCA has given more depth to my voice.”
In some ways it is an obvious collaboration: an artist’s work – beautiful, considered and from the heart – adorning the packaging and products of a company with a marketing campaign all about inner and outer beauty.
With previous artists including Louise Zhang, Tammy Kanat, Claudia Moodoonuthi, Atong Atem, Remecca Baumann and Tanya Schultz, MECCA’s holiday collection is now a collectable item for many beauty and art lovers.
“Holiday at MECCA is all about capturing a sense of joy and beauty through a generosity of spirit – a bright spark in a year full of highs and lows,” says Horgan about this year’s collaboration. “This is a sentiment we welcome with open arms as we celebrate with our community a positive end to 2021 and the new year ahead. The incredible calibre of female artist talent we can work with through the NGV is so impressive. Naomi’s work is bursting with vivacity, energy and colour, and the exploration of her culture adds a strong and authentic dimeson to storytelling.”
Hobson’s practice is driven by a desire to celebrate life within her community through referencing Kaantju and Umpila stories as well as pop culture and current events.
For this collaboration, she was inspired by significant events throughout 2020, notably the pandemic, the global Black Lives Matter movement and protests in Australia demanding action on Aboriginal deaths in custody. Using the media as her source material, the artist noticed the abundant use of the colour red in news stories reporting on these events, as well as the events themselves. Red being a historical symbol for emotional states of being, such as anger, love, courage and passion, Hobson incorporated a high-key red into her works to express the intensity of the events she was witnessing.
“I don’t approach painting with deep complex thoughts or overthink a topic,” says Hobson. “But I can be woken in the middle of the night with a colour or when I’m on a long road trip, or I can be sitting at a place in my Country and that place will come to me as a colour.”
Hobson’s work will feature on 12 packaging variations for the brand’s 2021 luxury gift boxes and bags, its signature line collections and in the windows of more than 100 MECCA stores in Australia and New Zealand.
Image above: Naomi Hobson in her studio. Photo: Jacky Kao. Courtesy: the artist and the MECCA brands.
Image below: Naomi Hobson’s collaboration with MECCA for its 2021 Holiday collection. Courtesy: the artist and the MECCA brands.
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