Floating life: contemporary Aboriginal fibre art

118 119 Mabel Juli, Lily Karadada and Rosie Karadada: Two brolgas and the coolamon Diane Moon Mabel Juli is well versed in the law and culture of her people, which she sustains through ceremonial singing and dancing. She also has the knowledge and seniority to paint Gija creation narratives, using powerful minimal images. Juli has a deep appreciation of the materiality of the natural pigments she uses and a rare feeling for colour, applying up to six layers to build luminous, subtly textured surfaces. Ochres are sourced from near and far, as the artist comments: We get white from Rose’s yard. You go along the Hall’s Creek road and then you turn off at the Springvale road. It doesn’t take too long, you leave early and you get back early. Red ochre comes from Kununurra way. 1 Juli’s understated designs allude to her rich experience of the sparse desert environment. With her poetic sensibility she tells the story of her painting Two brolgas and the coolamon 2007: Two brolgas, sisters, were digging at the hard ground to soften it so they could gather bush yams (emjundaing in Gija language), which they placed in a coolamon (lahndurr-ji). The ground was hard and they were hot and thirsty for water. They made a nest near a rockhole where there was fresh water and the red beetle filled their coolamon. They drank it up then followed the beetle to find the water source. They were happy, swimming and frolicking, and made large wings for themselves out of branches. Then they ran until they took flight, calling out ‘Ku-rahk’ to each other to go higher and higher as they carried the coolamon into the sky. Later the green tree frog hit the sides of the coolamon so that the water flowed back into the rockhole, where it remains today. 2 Lily Karadada’s Coolamon 2001 and Rosie Karadada’s Water carrier 1996 are rare examples of traditional vessels used for carrying babies or transporting food or water. They are made from carefully selected eucalyptus bark which has been dried by heating it over a small fire, whilst moulding it to shape. The folded ends, secured with bark fibre string, are then sealed with bush resin to make the container waterproof. Both artists specialise in representing wandjina spirits on bark or canvas, graven on slates and in etchings. Sometimes the wandjina are shown emerging from a veil of dots (rain), or alluded to as on Lily Karadada’s painted coolamon, where a series of yellow ochre circles are surrounded by dots relating to her connection with water bubbling from a spring. In fact, at the time of her conception, her father named her Minindil, meaning ‘bubbles’. The wandjina image, painted in her bold and uncompromising style, is central to the surface patterning on Rosie Karadada’s coolamon. The sharp tonal contrast between the strong lines of the simple red ochre images and white clay ground is softened by painted dots representing rain, the wandjina’s natural environment. Mabel Juli’s painting and the coolamons by Lily and Rosie Karadada illustrate the layers of meaning to be drawn from Aboriginal material culture, where essentially beautiful traditional objects are even further embellished to tell stories of spirit and place. Mabel Juli Gija people WA c.1933 Two brolgas and the coolamon (detail) 2007 Natural pigments on canvas 50 x 150cm Acc. 2008.236 Purchased 2008. The Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund © The artist. Courtesy Warmun Art Centre Endnotes 1. Information supplied by Megan Buckley, Warmun Art Centre, November 2005. 2. From transcription by Jacqueline Coyle-Taylor, Warmun Art Centre, 22 August 2008.