KIM KIRKMAN
Writer; FORM building a state of creativity
In Nauiyu, a small Northern Territory community on the banks of the Daly River, 25 year-old Kieren Karritpul translates to canvas the handwoven nets crafted by his maternal line for generations from merrepen palm to collect barramundi from the creek. Flowing lines of acrylic on linen drawing an enduring family practice into a new form. “I paint about weaving because my mother, my grandmother and my great grandmother are really strong weavers,” Karritpul said. “My mum, she’s a weaver and I am putting it on canvas, telling a new way from the old way.”
Kieren Karritpul, 2019. Photograph by Claire Martin.
In Cairns, on the tropical far north coast of Queensland, artist, designer and curator Grace Lillian Lee twists and loops reels of bright cotton webbing into bespoke pieces of wearable art; sculptures of ceremonial body armour which connect with her Torres Strait Islander heritage and its culture of palm frond weave adornments: from frond skirts to grasshopper ornaments. “It’s been a great way for me to connect and be proud of who I am and where I came from but also to let that be known by the wider community,” Lee said. “It’s really enabled me to be able to share my stories and struggles within that space in a really beautiful, tactile way.”
Grace Lillian Lee, 2019. Photograph by Claire Martin.
Functional and ornamental, ceremonial and sculptural: fibre art in Aboriginal culture is ancient and innovative, reforming itself in myriad ways across Australia’s remote art centres and at the hands of some of its most groundbreaking practitioners to arrive at a contemporary space which finds it at once an act of activism and reclamation, a celebration of identity and a translation of culture. At Bula’bula Arts in Ramingining, artists are experimenting with modern takes on an ancient ritual. Artists from the centre have collaborated with Spanish designer Alvaro Catalán de Ocón to produce suspension lampshades inspired by traditional woven Yolngu mats, and with Sydney homeswares designer Koskela to create pendant lights. “Bula’bula weavings are works which have ritual and ceremonial significance mostly,” centre Manager Hilary Crawford said. The weaving is also shared work, harvesting grasses, dying and sharing colours. “They’re a force of nature,” Crawford said. “They work together.”
Bulabula artists Mary Dhapalany, Margaret Djarrbalabal and Evonne Munuyngu, 2019. Photograph by Claire Martin.
Boisdale artist Cassie Leatham is a keeper of 11 traditional weaves, sharing and sustaining ancient cultural practice. “I’ve gone into the Pilliga and I’ve taught weaving there. I’ve brought weaving back for those people,” Leatham said. “There were only two weavers and now there are about 58 weavers in that community alone. It keeps the young girls, and some young lads as well, enthralled with the ways of our old people, continuing that practice so it can be passed on and used by future generations.” Leatham is part of Baluk Arts, a 100 per cent Aboriginal owned and operated art centre on the Mornington Peninsula. Baluk’s Manager, Nicole Chaffey, said work at the centre sought to frame history within a contemporary context. “We’re taking old ways of doing things into today to demonstrate that Aboriginal culture is dynamic and evolving and fluid,” Chaffey said. “We’re here, we’re now, we’re contemporary; we’re not stuck in a point in the past.”
Cassie Leatham, 2019, photograph by Claire Martin.
In southeast Victoria, possum skin is important as a cultural material and as a way of communicating, so many of Baluk’s artists incorporate possum into their work in some way or other. Likewise the materiality of kelp, which is also an important cultural object for medicinal and nutritional purposes, and for its utility – threaded into pouches to carry fresh water. “Incorporating that with beautiful threads like silk and cotton and linen and feathers that have been found or procured or gifted is really important,” Chaffey said. “New work that is coming up at the centre incorporates feathers from black swans, tawny frog mouths, lorikeets and all sorts of other beautiful little things. We like to honour them in death.”
Fibre Sculpture by Lisa Waup. Size: 12 x 12 x 25cm
In Pormpuraaw, on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, artists are transforming the wreckage of plastic fishing nets found washed up on their beaches into art as activism: coiled and plaited into marine animals, some with debris in their stomachs, highlighting the impact of these ghost nets on the environment. Celebrated Pormpuraaw artist Syd Bruce Short Joe describes the process as “taking something terrible and turning it into something beautiful and meaningful.¹” “(Ghost nets) drift on the currents, continuing to catch and kill fish, dolphins, whales, sea turtles and other protected species, many of which are our totems,” Short Joe said. “Taking this terrible form of pollution and recycling it into art is important to raising awareness.” Pormpuraaw Art and Culture Centre manager Paul Jakubowski said the quality of the sculptures had been instrumental in launching artwork onto the world stage. “Ghost net sculptures have proven to stand out,” he said. “Part of their success has been the environmental message these works share.”
Artwork- Minh Pinch or Barra, a ghostnet sculpture by Eric Norman. Photography by Taryn Hays.
At Anindilyakwa Arts on Groote Eylandt, artists are winding their ghost net baby baskets in plant dyed fabrics, performing a symbolic repossession of the sculptures with traditional textiles.
“Ghost net weaving on Groote Eylandt is very different from the ghost net weaving that happens in other parts of the gulf country and across Australia,” Anindilyakwa Arts Manager Aly De Groot said. “The artists get the ghost nets from the Anindilyakwa sea rangers and they have their own style where they wrap the ghost net with the plant dyed fabrics. I see that as being like wrapping a wound with a bandage, reclaiming this terrible environmental threat with a love of Country and the colours from the land.”
Annabell Amagula, 2019. Photograph by Claire Martin.
In Aboriginal fibre art, tradition and invention are concurrent. Tapestries of meaning that go beyond the decorative, giving a visual shorthand to identity, time and place. In the alchemy of weaving, merging and entwining harvested grasses, bush string or plastic netting into vessels for carrying fish, water, ornament, meaning; are stories of the people who craft them, and the changing forces that are shaping their lives. In the reinvention and interpretation of the practice of weaving across Australia are signifiers of the universal things that matter.
The Alchemists exhibits at The Goods Shed until mid February 2020.