Floating life: contemporary Aboriginal fibre art

134 135 Lena Yarinkura: ‘. . .weaving, it can make you happy’ Diane Moon Lena Yarinkura was born in 1961 into the Kune people, whose country lies to the south of Maningrida, Northern Territory. At an early age, she learned the conventional range of twined pandanus and looped string basketry from her mother, Lena Djamarrayku (1943–2005), and made kunmadj (baskets), djerrh (string bags) and walabi (fishing nets) for personal use and for sale. Mother and daughter constantly exchanged ideas, and Yarinkura soon began experimenting with different forms, stitches and genre, eventually inspiring a fibre-based sculptural movement which has now extended far beyond the Maningrida region. Since the 1980s, Yarinkura has been at the forefront of innovations which have seen the art of Maningrida become distinctly more experimental. The abstract rarrk (crosshatched patterning) on bark paintings has been given primacy, and become increasingly refined to more closely resemble a woven surface. Fibre artists have become sculptors; fibre spirit figures and animals are often finished with painted features or intricate body designs, and some carved figures carry woven bags or nets. Yarinkura’s sculptural virtuosity was first evident in the mid 1980s, in her design and construction of large, curved bark shelters to house her family and for use as a studio, where the choice of materials and spatial considerations are vital to comfort and aesthetic enjoyment. This engagement with natural materials, with binding, tying and building, combined with acceptance of their ephemeral nature, also characterises Yarinkura’s approach to sculpture. She embraces divergence and invention, and allows for intuition and spontaneity in her process — qualities more akin to the immediacy of working in fibre than in wood. The elements for Yarinkura’s fibre sculptures are collected from her clan estates, the use of local materials providing an integral link between the mythological nature of her subjects and their physical forms. Kundayarr (pandanus) and kundalk (grass) are used for twine-woven bodies, and benok (bush turkey) and karnamarr (black cockatoo) feathers provide marreno (hair). Distinguishing features and decorative patterns are applied with manarr (red), delek (white), karlba (yellow) and roerroe (black) pigments. A group of Yarinkura’s spirit figures in the Gallery’s Collection includes two yawkyawk, the female water spirits which are a recurring theme for the artist and a very real part of her life. These enigmatic spirits inhabit several sites in freshwater streams and pools around Maningrida, and one of these lies in the artist’s mother’s country at Borlkdjam. With a fish tail, and long hair resembling trailing blooms of green algae, they are much like the European idea of a mermaid. Even today, these spirits are believed to leave their aquatic homes under cover of darkness, continuing the journeys of their ancestors. The larger yawkyawk figure in the Collection is formed of loosely twined pandanus strands coloured golden with bush dyes, with a body stuffed with paperbark to which spindly arms of bound pandanus fibres are attached. Her face is defined by a circle of red ochre with features painted in white pipe clay, and surrounded by a halo of white feather hair. In contrast, her sister yawkyawk is painted with bold red and black striped body markings, and is topped with a luxuriant mane of black feather hair. The human scale of these spirit figures allows us to identify with the yawkyawk in a very real sense and imagine them in waterways closer to home. The body of Yarinkura’s Ngalmudj (Rainbow serpent) 2004 has been woven from pandanus and stuffed with paperbark to keep its shape. Lena Yarinkura Kune/Rembarrnga people NT b.1961 Yawkyawk (Female water spirit) 2004 Twined pandanus palm leaf, wood, feathers, paperbark, with natural pigments 216 x 56 x 28.5cm Acc. 2004.244 Purchased 2004. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation © Lena Yarinkura 2004. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2009 Yawkyawk (Female water spirit) 2004 Twined pandanus palm leaf, wood, feathers, paperbark, with natural pigments 195.5 x 47 x 26cm Acc. 2004.243 Purchased 2004. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation © Lena Yarinkura 2004. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2009