Floating life: contemporary Aboriginal fibre art

12 13 Always active and creative, Lena Yarinkura articulated the importance she placed on her weaving practice in conversation with anthropologist Christiane Keller: I especially like weaving, when we go hunting or sitting somewhere, most people are doing nothing. If you do weaving, it can make you happy. 3 A number of her works are included in ‘Floating Life’, but the pandanus sculpture Yawkyawk (Female water spirit) 2004, with her steady gaze and halo of white feather ‘hair’, typifies the artist’s own playful character. The inherent qualities of strength and flexibility in the raw materials used by Shirley MacNamara could be a metaphor for a people who have struggled for cultural survival. Her exquisite Guutu (Vessel) 14 2001 embodies the invisible links she perceives between Aboriginal people and the lived textures of their culture. For this artist, the lateral roots of the spiny spinifex plant, twined into tough vessels, parallel the resilience of a nation called upon to survive their fluctuating fortunes and negative public attitudes. Though fibre art has a long and enduring history in Aboriginal culture, knowledge of processes and techniques may have been lost to some over the past two centuries. A day trip away from Brisbane is the sublimely beautiful land of Minjerribah, known as Stradbroke Island. The road to the barge and ferry depot is lined with native hibiscus trees ( Hibiscus tiliaceus ) — gnarled trunks, big leaves, and short-lived yellow flowers with a deep red centre. Like many others along the northern Australian coastline, Moreton Bay Aboriginal people used native hibiscus bark to make strong fishing and hunting nets and multi-stranded ropes; they also spun a finer twine for the myriad uses that we all have for a piece of string. With European settlement, their great nets were removed to encourage dependence, and the people were deprived of annual dugong feasts and seasonal gluts of fresh fish. Later, their lives were increasingly disrupted when building began in earnest, as oysters were rudely scooped up from the Bay in boatloads to be used in construction. In local museum collections, though, there are rare, tangible records of a refined material culture, including kulai — flat bags woven from moon-ga (reeds), which were stripped, soaked in running water, dried and processed in hot ashes. These beautiful baskets were remarked on as early as 1836 when James Backhouse, a Quaker minister visiting the colonies to teach the gospel, was detained at the Amity Point Pilot Station on Minjerribah while waiting for weather calm enough for his ship to cross the South Passage Bar. A keen naturalist, he recorded his description of the unique diagonal patterning of the kulai: The base of these rushes is of a pale colour, the portion included in the sheaths at the base, or just emerging from them, is of a pinky hue and the top green. By arranging the knots so as to form diagonal lines across the bag, the colours are brought into tasteful order. 4 Such treasures of refined ornamentation and elegant design survive in Australian and international museum collections. Opposite Artist unidentified Stradbroke Island Kulai (bag) (detail) collected pre 1917 Loop-woven moon-ga (reeds) 40 x 27cm Collection: The University of Queensland Anthropology Museum Ruby Ludwick Kuku Yalanji people QLD b.1945 Basket (detail) 2002 Coil-woven pandanus palm leaf with natural dyes 14.2 x 39.5 x 39cm (complete) Acc. 2003.053a–b Commissioned 2002 with funds from the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation