AMELIA JAJKO
Still, You Give
Region: Kimberley
Medium: Oil and oil stick on canvas
Size: 145.5cm (h) x 147.5cm (w)
Price: $8,800
Artwork Description:
I step out while the house still sleeps,
sandals gripping wet rock,
as the tide recedes,
pulling me toward the reef –
unfolding, with no demand.
It breathes in bubbles and clicks.
A shimmer of life stirs.
A Blue-ringed octopus
unfurls like smoke –
he grants me permission:
a warning and a welcome.
Not my home.
Tread with care.
Wind cuts across the mudflats.
Coral clusters huddle like families waiting out a storm.
Their colour still holds.
As the water disappears,
anemones stretch into pink folds –
bubble gum, slack.
Some coral went pale last season.
Others shout in neon –
a final flare.
Your refuge warmed by change –
still, you give shelter, safety, stillness.
I paint the colours brighter than they were.
That’s how memory works –
how I try to honour it.
Still, I hold the colours.
Still, I hope.
Even now,
as I go to wake my children,
the tide follows me home.
PEOPLE'S CHOICE
ARTIST BIO
Amelia Jajko is a visual artist living and working on Yawuru Country in Rubibi/Broome, WA. Her painting practice is grounded in phenomenological inquiry, engaging with the emotional and ecological qualities of landscape. Informed by the remote Kimberley region, her work reflects on cycles of change and human interdependence, and how these shape our understanding of place.
Jajko’s en plein air paintings act as site-responsive fieldwork – intimate studies that respond to the fleeting qualities of light, colour, and rhythm in the natural world.
Embracing slowness and reciprocity, these works inform larger studio paintings that hold space for memory and invite a deepened connection to landscape.
Amelia has been a finalist in The Jury Art Prize (2023), the Lester Prize (2021), and the Australian Regional Landscape Prize (2022), and is a two-time recipient of Highly Commended awards at the Shinju Art Awards, where she won the People’s Choice Award in 2023. She was awarded a Regional Arts WA grant in 2020 to develop her solo exhibition People of Broome, shown at Black Stump Gallery, followed by Love Letter to Kimberley in 2022.
Alongside her practice, Jajko works as a freelance arts facilitator across Broome and surrounding remote communities.
