Since graduating from Queensland College of Art in 2017 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (majoring in Interdisciplinary Print Media), Tamika Grant-Iramu has continued to develop her practice in relief printmaking. Inspired by the environment of her immediate natural surroundings, Tamika’s practice focuses on the minute areas of native and introduced flora, bringing into focus these aspects that often go unnoticed. The connection she has to place and the physicality of relief-print carving intertwine as she explores her cultural identity, using her creative practice to find ways of connecting with the differed threads of her Papua New Guinean, European and Torres Strait Islander heritage. The carving techniques and storytelling aesthetics of Torres Strait Islander and Papua New Guinean culture combined with the Western influences of her upbringing converge in her practice as she explores and grows her own story. Informed by techniques and conceptual approaches of her printmaking practice, Tamika also translates her artworks into new mediums such as textiles, interior furnishings, and public art.
Since shooting to prominence in 2018 as one of the finalists for the prestigious 2018 ‘Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards’ (NATSIAA), Tamika was shortlisted for the 2019 Haugesund International Festival for Artistic Relief Print at the Haugesund Art Gallery (Norway), a Onespace Gallery feature artist in the 2019 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair where she received the Emerging Artist Award, a finalist in the 2020 National Works on Paper Awards, Mornington Peninsular Art Gallery, Victoria and most recently was awarded Highly Commended at the Sunshine Coast Art Prize 2022. In 2019, she was an Australia Council Grant Recipient (Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Panel), which funded the collaborative development of a new artwork with nationally celebrated artist Brian Robinson, showcased in a stand-out exhibition titled, A Carved Landscape: Stories of Connection and Culture in 2021. Tamika has undertaken numerous public art commissions, including a major public art project at STARS Herston Hospital completed in 2020, which has recently been shortlisted as a finalist for the Rider Levett Bucknall’s Award for Best Public Art Project. The STARS commission also led to developing a collaborative suite of custom designed rugs with Designer Rugs Australia launched in March 2022. Throughout the course of Tamika’s five-year career as an emerging artist, she has been collected by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, QAGOMA, Queensland Children’s Hospital and both regional and university galleries.
