Floating life: contemporary Aboriginal fibre art

44 45 thrill of encountering new pleasures and sources of inspiration. It may be, as writer Nicholas Rothwell has pointed out, that gallery audiences do not experience the same deep tremor of recognition as artists and their peers deeply embedded in Aboriginal cultures and histories. Yet, bridging the gap of understanding is the viewers’ delight in the works. There is a view, first propounded by art teacher and Papunya art coordinator Geoffrey Bardon, that contemporary Aboriginal art-making is a ‘channel of escape from unbearable circumstances’ inspired by ‘suffering and redemption’. However, there is also in many Indigenous works a sense of fulfilment in expressing the power of cultural tradition, order and truth through pattern, colour and texture. The joy of creating work about country from within country is palpable. There is the power of making energies to replenish land and people and celebrate kinship with the spirit world and one’s kin. There is the sense of satisfaction from using local materials gathered and prepared by the artists and of creating perfection in difficult conditions. There is the act of teaching through familial and cultural relationships, with others sitting and watching and earning the right to create, and of anchoring community through the concentration of one’s thoughts and actions in the meditative movement and rhythms of creation. Consider the traditional mandjabu (conical fish traps) of Western Arnhem Land. Their history dates back to ancient times and the right to create them is earned only by seniority and knowledge. For each mandjabu, metres of vine must be collected and then treated in water to render it flexible, before it is woven in two stages into the man-size traps used by senior elders to catch large quantities of fish during the early dry season. Today, the mandjabu are also made for the art market, often in cooperation between men and women working together. Mary Marabamba began by watching her father, and was then taught the craft by her husband; after his death she began making her own. Establishing themselves as respected artists and earning good money through the art market are other sources of satisfaction. From this comes cash to care for family and kin and to underwrite other cultural practices. There is also the excitement of being part of an extraordinary movement that, over a few short decades, has made Aboriginal culture visible nationally and internationally — with all that this means for recognition of Indigenous rights to culture and land. Then, there is the joy of creating adornments — headdresses, dancing belts, armbands and necklaces imbued with meaning and symbolism, linking performers to ancestral creative beings, country and kin. Works by the Tiwi people of Bathurst and Melville Islands are vibrant expressions of culture. The great pukumani (mortuary ceremonies) are occasions for outpourings of grief, and the making of objects to honour creation stories. Tutini (grave posts) carved from local wood and painted in natural pigments of red, black, yellow and white are erected in the bush. Large decorated baskets (tunga) made from stringybark — in ‘Floating Life’ created by Tiwi artists Pedro Wonaeamirri and Timothy Cook — are placed on top of the poles. In the ceremony, painted dancers wear elaborate headdresses and armbands. All are decorated in varying compositions of jilamara — geometric patterns of circles, lines and dots that encode country, myths and ceremonies. Innovation is central to Tiwi creative works, encouraged by the ancestral founders and the thriving commercial interest in Tiwi textiles, ceramics and other art objects now represented in major national and international galleries. The cool green in the strands of tiny maireener shells, created by Lola Greeno (Palawa people), refracts light in a myriad of shades, calling up the smells and sounds of seawater and sand. Yet, it is impossible to see separately from the iconic photograph of Truganini taken in 1866 — her neck adorned with strands of these same shells, on her face a piercing rebuke. Greeno’s work reflects the scars that remain from a genocidal past, and celebrates the knowledge and skills handed down by countless generations of Palawa women. Danie Mellor’s pencil and crayon drawings tell another story of loss and reclamation from his mother’s country in the Atherton Tableland of north Queensland (Mamu/Ngadjonji people). He mimics the works of colonial scientists who combed the tropical forests seeking specimens of primitive cultures and native flora and fauna to add to collections in distant museums. The drawings point to the truth of how their schemata of classification and analysis obscured Aboriginal scientific systems and knowledge. Yet, the jawun (basket) and the vine flower refute the alien meanings forced onto them. Looking at the narrbong (string bags) created from cast-off metal and wire by Lorraine Connelly-Northey (Waradgerie people), I can’t help but see the old Nyungar uncles I know swooping down to pick up old lengths of wire they might need to mend something at home. Theirs was a mix of shame and pride in knowing how to make-do. There is an indefinable beauty in these narrbong — reclaimed from the detritus of rural Australia, marked by the patina of use and neglect, and ingeniously revitalised and re-created into works of art. The truths of history are woven into them. There are the specific experiences of Aboriginal people, such as Lorraine Connelly- Northey in Victoria’s mallee bushlands, or the Nyungar people in the wheat belt in Western Australia, treated as cast-offs by strangers who invaded their lands. There is also the struggle faced by all women trapped in poverty to nourish and provide for their families. Senior fibre artist Yvonne Koolmatrie (Ngarrindjeri people) creates sculptural forms from the sedge rushes, using coil-stitched basketry techniques used for millennia by her people from the lower Murray River region in South Australia. There is a disarming directness in her works. ‘Look at us’, they say, ‘we are still here and we can create beauty from the most elemental of things’. Her eel and yabby traps model traditional forms. Her flying machines suggest lightness and humour in approach and vision. Who could resist the fat little biplane that waits impatiently to fly off spluttering and coughing towards the horizon? Koolmatrie has dedicated herself to passing on traditional basket-making practices to the next generation of artists. Another story of generous sharing in women’s fibre work emerges from the placement in ‘Floating Life’ of her Sister basket 2007 next to Maung weaver Gwongil’s Double-sided bag c.1960s. In 1926, missionary Gretta Matthews taught the basketry coil method she learned from Ngarrindjeri women to Maung women at Warruwi (Goulburn Island), who adopted it to make baskets and tablemats for tourists. From there, the technique spread east, west and south along networks of kin and proximity, to become one of the most popular methods for creating fibre works for the art market in Northern and Central Australia. All these works engage us in a multiplicity of ways. For audiences, there is beauty that excites the senses through colour, harmony of design, subtlety of texture, feeling for subject matter and masterful technique. This spills out in a seemingly inexhaustible heterogeneity of styles. For the jaded, and those accustomed to a narrow cultural view of beauty, there is the Jackie Kurltjunyintja Giles Pintubi/Ngaanyatjarra people WA b.1937 Valiant 2007 Synthetic polymer paint on Valiant 118.5 x 149 x 10cm Acc. 2008.022 Purchased 2008. The Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund Left Aubrey Tigan Bardi/Jawu people WA b.1945 Riji (pearlshell pendant): Traditional Bardi trading shell 2006 Pearlshell, hair string with natural pigment 55.5cm (length); pendant: 17.5 x 13.8 x 2.1cm Acc. 2006.122 Right Riji (pearlshell pendant): Traditional Bardi trading shell 2006 Pearlshell, hair string with natural pigment 39cm (length); pendant: 16.8 x 13 x 1.7cm Acc. 2006.123 Purchased 2006. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation