Meet the Niah McLeod x Koala Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal Homewares Collection
One look at Niah McLeod’s delicate, poignant Aboriginal dot paintings and you’ll fall in love. We sure did – so much so that we collaborated with her to commit three of her artworks to textiles so you can bring them into your home.
Meet Niah McLeod
For 60,000 years, First Nations’ stories have passed through generations. Passed around the fire. Carved into the rock. Niah, a descendant of the Monero, Wandandian and Yuin people from south-eastern Australia, continues that storytelling tradition on canvas, connecting past and present, dot by dot.
Say a big ol’ Koala hello to Niah McLeod – a First-Nations fine artist, Mum of two who calls the North Coast of New South Wales home. Our ears pricked up when we discovered Niah loves to paint from bed – a girl after our own hearts.
Her stunning dot artworks have gained a serious following since she began exhibiting them in 2015, being selected for the Other Art Fair in Sydney that same year, and winning the Young Artist Award at the 2017 Paddington Art Prize. In 2016, Tourism Australia commissioned Niah to design their Indigenous logo, to boot.
A (very!) limited-edition collaboration
And goodness gracious, are her artworks something to behold! So much so that we were compelled to partner with Niah to transfer her stories from the canvas onto textiles (that means cushions, bed linen and throw rugs in fancy pants terms) to bring these fine artworks straight into Aussie homes.
This artist collaboration is a first of its kind for Koala and one we are super-duper proud of. The limited-edition range consists of five products, with only 980 units available. In total. When we said exclusive, we bloody well meant it.
Alexandra Owen, Koala’s Director of Product Design, tells us: “Working with Niah has been a pleasure and an honour for our Sydney-based design team. Niah’s talent, attention to detail and commitment to social enterprise has been inspiring for us all to witness.
Her striking and intricate artworks naturally lent themselves to our textiles/new homewares products. We worked closely with Niah and our master craftspeople in India to achieve a level of quality to match her artworks.”
Lucky for us, Niah totally digs the collaboration too. “I’m exceptionally proud of this partnership with Koala”, she says. And don’t we love to hear it!
“This collection is a tribute to my country and my land. Each piece tells the story of my ancestors. To work with Koala on bringing these pieces to life and into your home has been a total joy”.
