The Tasman Council Australia Day Awards are presented annually and recognise outstanding individuals/groups that make a real contribution and difference to our community. This year the awards will be presented at the Tasman Council Australia Day Awards Ceremony and Official Opening of the Tasman Arts & Crafts Exhibition, to be held at the Nubeena Civic Centre on the 27th of January . They will be presented by Mayor Rod McDonald and Australia Day Ambassador Dr. Christina Henri, Tasmanian Senior Australian of the Year 2014. All community members are welcome to attend.
Dr. Christina Henri who conceived the ‘Roses from the Heart’ project in 2003. Her memorial has expanded to include a number of art forms and is now recognised as a global public art phenomenon with the ‘bonnet’ symbolism a metaphor for convict women and their children.
Conceptual artist Christina Henri was born on 6 April 1949 in Hobart and is taking Australia’s female convict story to the world.
When Christina visited the Cascades Female Factory Historic Site in South Hobart in 2003, she was captivated by the female convict story and has worked tirelessly ever since to highlight the plight of convict women and their children.
Christina’s early works used images and installations of christening bonnets to focus on the high infant mortality rate at the Female Factory. Recent research indicates more than 1 000 children born to women incarcerated in the Female Factory are thought to have died.
Since 2007, Christina has been working on Roses from the Heart, the first ever memorial to the 25 566 women sentenced as convicts and transported to Australia from 1788 to 1853. Roses from the Heart invites people from around the world to make and contribute a servant’s bonnet to symbolise the life of each convict woman. In 2012, male and female prisoners from two Dublin prisons, presented Christina with 800 bonnets. So far 22 000 bonnets have been received for what will become an international tour site and permanent memorial in Tasmania.
Christina holds regular public events and performances such as Blessing of the Bonnets ceremonies and talks to community groups to highlight the female convict story and remove the ‘convict stain’. Many such events have been held in regional Australia to enrich the historical and cultural life of isolated communities.
In 2010, Christina was the main exhibitor of the Festival of Quilts at the National Exhibition Centre, in Birmingham, in the United Kingdom.
Christina wrote a weekly column about the lives of convict women for The Mercury from 2007 to 2012 and appears regularly on ABC Radio.
Christina completed her PhD in visual and performing arts in 2011. Her research focused on ‘Engaging the Convict Legacy: Art’s Role as a Means of Understanding’. Christina has been the honorary artist in residence at the Cascades Female Factory Historic Site since 2003.
