Floating life: contemporary Aboriginal fibre art

16 This approach began to have some impact and, in response to a display in 1994 of the Maningrida Collection of Aboriginal Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, senior artist and critic Elwyn Lynn wrote of ‘the tender care with which objects are made and how they become art, however abstractly self sufficient, emanating notions of praise and goodwill’. 6 Through combining paintings and objects with fibre works, narratives and histories became intertwined in museums. String String made from natural and synthetic fibres lies at the heart of ‘Floating Life’. String seems such a simple, almost inevitable, invention, and its pervasive presence in ancient Aboriginal narratives and rock paintings attests to its importance in daily life. The discovery that short filaments could be twisted into lengths as long and strong as were needed made monumental changes in the lives of early peoples, and cordage remains vital in the contemporary world. Soft, flexible threads made from animal and plant materials are still the basis for making cloth, both plain and decorative, for the textiles we need and enjoy. One early and still important source for string is human hair. Aubrey Tigan’s riji (pearlshell pendants) from the west Kimberley coast are still finished with human hair string in the old way, although he also regularly uses coloured commercial wools. Feathered hair strings adorn the banumbirr (morning star) poles in ‘Floating Life’, and felted hair is used to make bush fruits (food for spirit beings), which are attached to headbands and waistbands used in banumbirr rituals. There are many sources of vegetable fibre for string throughout Australia. Lena Yarinkura in Arnhem Land commonly uses budbud (kurrajong), godburr (cocky apple), jarnhba (banyan), kundayarr (pandanus) and mayhdenge (Chinese burr). Art historian Elina Spilia writes of the layering of practical and cultural knowledge of the Yolngu of eastern Arnhem Land in regard to the kurrajong: The red-flowering kurrajong ( Brachychiton paradoxum ), with its luminous buds strung vertically up a dark, woody stem, brings striking colour to north-east Arnhem Land’s dry season sclerophyll. The deciduous tree flowers only after it has shed its leaves and, in the idiom of the Yolngu, the flowers of the dharrangulk herald that stingrays and sharks have a new liver (djukarr), their seasonal birthing is occurring and they are ready to be hunted. 7 Historic references, and the many thousands of examples stored in Australian and international museums, give us insights into the ubiquity of string in Aboriginal societies across Australia. For instance, string features in the mysterious toas in the South Australian Museum that were collected between 1890 and 1905. The small wooden sculptures, sharpened at one end to stand in the ground, were waymarkers linked to dreaming tracks, carved and painted to record topographical features of the land and events that took place there. Evocative descriptions include references to string-making and weaving: ‘To the plain where Nurawordubununa camped and made himself some Jadi (spindles)’; ‘To Billimununi Lake, where Noangandrini camped and made a Billi (net bag) with a large mesh from reeds’; ‘To the sandhill where Wittimarkani camped and invented a new style of weaving a Billitjilpi (net). She knotted each mesh separately so that the net would not tear easily’; and ‘To the plain where Wittimarkani once burnt her Billi (net bag) accidentally, by placing it too close to the fire. She named the locality after this occurrence’. 8 Brachychiton paradoxum (Red flowered kurrajong) Photograph: D Greig © Australian National Botanic Gardens Opposite Margaret Djogiba Kunwinjku people NT b.1960 Djerrh (String bag) 2007 Loop-woven sand palm leaf string with natural dyes 66 x 31cm Acc. 2008.169 Purchased 2008. The Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund