Ken and Paul Thaiday on their remarkable artworks from the Torres Strait

The pitoval First Nations celebration that is NAIDOC Week is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year - and continues until Sunday 13 July. The 2025 theme—The Next Generation: Strength, Vision and Legacy—looks firmly to the future while celebrating the achievements of the past. 

And that theme has inspired this episode of Streets of Your Town.

Renowned Torres Strait Islander artist Ken Thaiday is a cultural custodian whose remarkable kinetic sculptures have featured in exhibitions around the world.

Together with his son Paul Thaiday, they are restoring and creating new artworks for this year’s Cairns Indigenous Art Fair or CIAF, starting on July 10.

Born and raised on Darnley Island - the man affectionately known as Uncle Ken has spent decades interpreting traditional Torres Strait Islander ceremonies through these striking moving sculptures, dance masks and headdresses that move with dancer and appear to come to life.

He uses a mix of modern and traditional techniques and materials to keep his culture alive, continuing a tradition that has been handed down for hundreds of generations over thousands of years.

Even now in his senior years, with his mobility declining, Uncle Ken cuts bamboo to exact proportions on his lap ready for assembly, with the armrests of his wheelchair also showing the saw marks from his work.

As Uncle Ken and Paul tell us on this episode of Streets of Your Town, these three shark masks and three dugong sculptures are symbolic ceremonial objects, that show the power of intergenerational collaboration.

Streets of your Town podcast would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians on whose land this story was gathered, the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji peoples.

I acknowledge that for tens of thousands of years First Nations people walked this country and shared stories on this great land down under, and I walk in their footsteps today.  

I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.

For more shownotes and links - please go to my substack for this episode at soyt.substack.com

nancehaxton.com.au