SYDNEY.- Cooee Art Gallery presents SKIN, the first solo show in Sydney for Darwin based artist Joshua Bonson. The exhibition will be on view at Cooee Art Gallery Paddington until the 8th September 2018.

Bonson shares stories of his Indigenous heritage through his work. SKIN is a celebration of his family's totem - The Saltwater Crocodile - and his personal view of the world.

Whilst in his senior years at school, Bonson started to dabble with paint, creating textured black and white paintings in acrylics in what he describes as a 3D style. He applies his paint thickly creating works that are contemporary in appearance yet embody age old Indigenous traditions and meanings.

The idea is to recreate the scales of a saltwater crocodile, which my grandfather told me is my totem. The armoured skin of the reptile is shown by the built-up serrations of the paint and other materials applied by hand or directly from the tube. But it also works on different levels – it can be read as a close-up of a reptile’s skin and as a landscape both seen from a distance and as close-up details of rock’s and sand - Joshua Bonson

In this current body of work, colour too plays an integral role. Thick underlying layers of blues and greens represent the sea; shades of black, yellow, orange and red create the details of rocks and sand reflecting country.

Through his art, Bonson is trying to rediscover his lost family culture and establish his place within it.

My great grandmother was from Badu in the Torres Strait Islands and her eldest son was my grandfather, Donald Bonson Senior. He is the inspiration for my work. He told me everything is connected - the land, the water and us. Like the crocodile, we are saltwater people with an ancient lineage – Joshua Bonson

Joshua also traces his ancestry through his great-great grandmother Dolly Bonson, a Jawoyn woman from Katherine who was also known as Bett-Bett the servant girl featured in We of the Never-Never and The Little Black Princess books by Jeannie Gunn.

Joshua Bonson was the youngest ever finalist in the prestigious Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award when just 18 years of age. Four years later at 22 he won the Togart Contemporary Art Award in Darwin. In 2013 Joshua was again a finalist in the 30th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, a finalist in the City of Albany Art Prize, and the winner of the Top End NAIDOC artist of the year.

In 2014 he held his first solo exhibition and received the Young Achievers Award NT, in the Artist of the Year ceremony. A year later he was awarded a scholarship to the Bundanon Trust Artists Retreat, NSW by Ervin Vidor, Director of the Toga Group and was also a finalist in the Churchie Art Award QLD.