The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Shirley Macnamara lives near Mt Isa in central Queensland where she runs a thriving cattle property with her son and his family. She has close ties with Camooweal and surrounding country through her mother’s Indilandji people, and with Alyawerre lands, particularly Lake Nash, through her late father. For APT7, the Gallery commissioned Macnamara to make Wingreeguu 2012, her contemporary comment on the transient bush shelters of the Indilandji people that were built to protect them from extreme weather conditions as they traversed their country. Macnamara searched for some time in the early 1990s before finding inspiration for her work in spinifex ( Triodia pungens ), a ubiquitous native grass throughout remote Australia. She always contemplates spinifex for her work as it signifies for her the grace and resilience of her people; she also loves it for the way it defines her local landscape. I could see myself as the spinifex. You belong to the area so your roots are there and you have to be strong enough to survive and keep going. I could see that in that plant. The seasons do not affect its survival. It manages to keep going. It is fragile as well as strong. But you are fragile as well. To survive in this country is not an easy thing. 1 Though plentiful in the often parched ground where Macnamara lives, for her work she takes only the individual ‘runner’ roots that generate and connect the spinifex clumps, such is her sensitivity to her environment. After stripping their dull outer layer, the fine inner strands reveal a hidden beauty in rich gold and red tones. Twisted, moulded, and finely coiled, they are stitched into objects reflecting forms in nature as well as objects drawn from personal experiences and memories. Macnamara often makes guutu (vessels), such as Erkel ( Vessel ) 2010, where she included local galah feathers, nest-like in the centre, and pasted deep red ochre to twined spinifex strands, adding contrasting textures and layers of cultural reference to the work. In commenting on Spinifex vessel 1997, Macnamara said: I combined the spinifex with yellow ochre from an old mining pit on the property. I would only use ochre from my own area. I combine both materials. The spinifex from above the ground, the ochre from below, one is so much a part of the other, symbolising the emotional and spiritual connection with the land . . . 2 Aboriginal people have long extracted spinifex resin for hafting knives, spears and axes and for using as medicine to treat colds and chest ailments. However, for Macnamara — who often surveys the landscape from a height while on horseback — it is the notion of spinifex used as shelter that has become significant. Finding links with the bush shelters that have been an important part of her life, she closely observes the various small insects and animals that take refuge in and around the spinifex hummocks in the unique dwellings they spin and glue together. I found all these insect cocoons out of which the shape developed. It became a vessel with the inside coated with ochre. The criss-crossing strands or ‘tracks’ on the outer surface are pathways with circles or loops linking the strands together . . . It represents being linked into the landscape and symbolically they are ‘sitting down’ places. 3 Macnamara has enduring memories of the aesthetic experience and her sense of contentment staying in wingreeguu as she moved between remote mustering camps as a young girl on the cattle trail with her parents and, later, with her husband. Covered with a durable shell of spiky, dense spinifex clumps, the rounded shape was ideal for deflecting wind and rain. The upturned clumps even made comfortable temporary bedding. Shelters were built, abandoned and destroyed by weather and seasonal fires. However, if they survived these ravages they could be refurbished with newly-grown spinifex when people returned to the site — the ultimate in sustainable building. Denuded of their leaves and upended by whirly winds, turpentine shrubs ( Acacia lysiphloia ) stand starkly in the landscape, suggesting to Macnamara early campsites. Wingreeguu 2012 is a tactile, sculptural form in which prepared spinifex strands are wound around the spindly branches of one of these ‘rubbish’ shrubs. It embodies the artist’s deep feelings for wingreeguu — so evocative are they of her early life, they remain in her memory as a ‘shadow’ dwelling. Wingreeguu connects Shirley Macnamara’s culture and history and forges links back to her beloved bush country, communicating her vision for her land and life to the world. In taking and using, she gives back all that she possibly can. 4 Diane Moon 1 Conversation with Diane Moon at Macnamara’s station in August 1997, in Spinifex Runner: A Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Fibre Art [exhibition catalogue], Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery, NSW, 1999. 2 Spinifex Runner , p.8 3 Spinifex Runner , p.4 4 Macnamara has engaged recently with a project that explores properties of spinifex that may make it useful as a sustainable building material. This project was initiated by Professor Paul Memmott, Director of the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre, School of Architecture, University of Queensland. In addition to providing greater understanding of the ecology and sharing knowledge between Aboriginal people and scientists, the project documents traditional Aboriginal use of spinifex. A traditional shelter was constructed at an arid-zone field station in Camooweal to support this important research. Shirley Macnamara and her family are working closely with researchers and anthropologists on the project. SHIRLEY MACNAMARA Wingreeguu 149