2014 Creative Arts Fellowship awarded to writer and artist Kim Mahood

For many ANU staff and students, the word ‘Coombs’ is synonymous with the beehive-like building towards the Eastern edge of the ANU campus.

But the legacy of Dr H C Coombs, the former ANU Chancellor who the building was named after, is far greater than this.

Kim Mahood and Veronica Lulu, Mulan Community 2012. Photo by Raphael Upcroft

It was Dr Coombs, or ‘Nugget’, as he was known, who established the ANU Creative Arts Fellowship, which will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2015.

By hosting artists from around Australia and the world, since 1965 the Fellowship has helped ANU establish itself as an international hub for artists, writers, composers, musicians and other visitors from creative fields.

Renamed the H C Coombs Fellowship after its founder in 1996, the prestigious grant has seen many well-established creative fellows grace the ANU grounds.

The Fellowship in 2014 has been awarded to artist and writer Kim Mahood. Having grown up in Central Australia and lived on a remote cattle station that has since been returned to its Traditional Owners, Mahood uses her work to document and share her experience with the broader community.

“The people I work with in the Tanami Desert, I’ve known since I was a child,” says Mahood.

“This is my way of keeping the two worlds connected to each other.”

One of the main goals of the Fellowship is to connect visiting Fellows with the University community. In keeping with this spirit, Mahood will run a number of workshops with undergraduate and postgraduate students on writing creative non-fiction, mapping oral histories and translating research into accessible language.

She will also take a group of artists associated with ANU on a field trip to Paruku/Lake Gregory, an inland lake system at the junction of the Tanami and Great Sandy Deserts, where she spends time each year in the Aboriginal community of Mulan. Mahood will be hosted by the School of Art while she is at ANU throughout the year.

Mahood joins a long list of prominent artists who have received the award throughout its half-century journey.

Three of its most well-known artists – Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Narritjin Maymuru – were celebrated in an exhibition held at the Drill Hall Gallery in 2007.

At the time, then ANU Vice-Chancellor Ian Chubb praised the foresight and breadth of vision of Dr Coombs in establishing the Fellowship.

“The Creative Arts Fellowships have been the catalyst for a corpus of work that ranks amongst the best visual art produced in Australia. Over six decades the University has built up a collection that reflects significant developments in Australian art.”

Here’s hoping that Coombs will continue to support and inspire creative fellows for another fifty years.