Floating life: contemporary Aboriginal fibre art

32 33 on their journeys. They lovingly describe the pendants of red lorikeet feathers, the long fringes, the basket ‘shining’ on a tree. The installation of morning star poles in ‘Floating Life’ by Gali Yalkarriwuy Gurruwiwi and other Galiwin’ku artists is imbued with this poetry, as is the feathered string piece by Lena Kurriniya and feathered ceremonial baskets and headpieces by Mary Wapulkuma. The activity of all the anthropological expeditions of the first half of the twentieth century resulted in the extensive permanent collections of fibre held in Australian museums, particularly the South Australian Museum, the Berndt Museum of Anthropology in Western Australia, and Museum Victoria (still a central source of reference for contemporary artists from many communities). Missions and art centres The Indigenous scholar Marcia Langton has pointed out that the engagement between widely varying missionary settlements and Aboriginal religions across Australia has contributed to contemporary Aboriginal art of today. 9 The white missionary Gretta Matthews (1877–1948) was taught coiled basketry by the Ngarrindjeri people late in the nineteenth century at the Maloga Mission along the lower Murray River at Marunka and Swan Reach. When she was moved after 1902 to Goulburn Island off the central Arnhem Land coast, Matthews passed the technique to the Maung people. 10 Crafts as a means of economic independence were encouraged on missions during very hard times for Aboriginal communities — such as the Catholic Mission of the Sacred Heart at Nguiu on Bathurst Island, the Presbyterian Ernabella Mission and the Lutheran Mission at Hermannsburg in Central Australia, and at Raukaan (Point Macleay) Mission on the Coorong in South Australia. Since the 1970s, the growth of art centres across outlying communities of the north and centre has given a fresh and invigorating focus to the production of innovative work by individual artists. Art advisers employed by Aboriginal councils have replaced missionaries in supporting and facilitating arts. Since 1995 in the Central Desert, Ngaanyatjarra women have transformed older forms of hair rings and ceremonial objects into extravagantly tactile and brilliantly coloured coiled baskets and sculptures (including a Toyota), working closely with non-Indigenous artists Thisbe Purich, Nalda Searles, Philomena Hali and Renita Glencross. Tim Acker and Jon Altman have highlighted how these remote area enterprises negotiate extraordinary cross-cultural terrain, working very productively with artists in small, marginalised communities. 11 Evolution of fibre in display The sculptural experience of basketry and fibre can generate wild enthusiasm, as I observed with pleasure at the 2006 openings of ‘Woven Forms: Contemporary Basket Making in Australia’ at Object Galleries in Sydney and at Form in Perth — a rich and surprising exhibition showing inventive work by Indigenous and non-Indigenous fibre-makers in every kind of material. 12 The audience was absorbed in the haptic and narrative richness, colour and texture of the pieces on display. Such collaborations have been hard won, and I would like to glance summarily at the background to the current fervour with a few examples of previous exhibitions of Aboriginal fibre art. Innovative curators such as Tony Tuckson (Tiwi funerary poles for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1959) and Nick Waterlow (Biennale of Sydney, 1979) brought Aboriginal art out of the ethnographic confines of the museum to be part of a living contemporary art. In the 1980s, the understanding of cultural regeneration Early anthropologists included Edwin Stirling in the 1890s in the Coburg Peninsula, north-east of Darwin; Walter Baldwin Spencer, who made glass-plate photographs across the centre and north of Australia in 1901 and 1911–12; and Lloyd Warner, who worked in central Arnhem Land in 1926–29. Father Ernest A Worms, a missionary and discerning anthropologist in Beagle Bay (north of Broome, Western Australia) in 1931, studied what he called the pearlshell ‘tjuringas’ of the Bardi people, shown here in the exquisite pearlshell pendants or riji with hair string by Aubrey Tigan. Donald Thomson was influential in the 1930s and 1940s, photographing people in Cape York and Arnhem Land, often with baskets and mats, such as those by Elizabeth Djuttara, Leanne Namanyilk and Shirley Minyingarla. The American–Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land in 1948 included notable commentators on Aboriginal art and artefacts Jane Goodale and Charles Mountford, and brought the previously unknown cultural richness of these scattered communities to an international audience. 8 Following TG Strehlow’s controversial work in Central Australia, the feminine perspective of anthropologists Fay Gale, Diane Bell and, more recently, Jennifer Biddle (to name only a few) has enlarged the understanding of art and artefacts in desert communities. The majestic epics of the Djang’kawu ancestors of the Yolngu, including the songs of the morning star and moon bone, were first translated by anthropologist Ronald M Berndt in the 1940s, and told of baskets at the core of founding myths. In these songs, not ascribed to a single author but handed down in the oral tradition, woven baskets and mats were the original sacred objects of the creation period, carried by the first ancestors Left Lorraine Connelly-Northey Waradgerie people Vic b.1962 Narrbong (String bag) 2007 Rusted gauze wire with black pelican down 24 x 9 x 9cm Acc. 2008.143 Right Narrbong (String bag) 2007 Rusted gauze wire with galah feathers and pelican down 15 x 8 x 8cm Acc. 2008.144 Purchased 2008. The Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund Maryanne Mungatopi Tiwi people NT 1966–2003 Objects used in Kulama ceremony 2000 Etching, lift ground aquatint in two colours, ed. 21/30 59 x 87.5cm Acc. 2007.153 Purchased 2007. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation © Maryanne Mungatopi 2000. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2009