MAGS WEBSTER
Writer,
FORM, building a state of creativity
Ghost nets. The abandoned detritus of broken and derelict fishing gear, tossed or torn from trawlers and fishing boats. The equivalent of thousands of square kilometres of non- biodegradable netting, polluting oceans and shorelines all over the world. Drifting currents and tides, snagging on reefs and wrecks, these abandoned meshes continue to fish indiscriminately. Debris, seaweed, rubbish from container ships. As if cast by invisible hands (hence the term ‘ghost’) these nets go on ‘fishing’ and are responsible for countless cruel and unintentional injuries and deaths. Turtles, dugong, whales, sharks. Dolphin, seabirds, rays. Marine creatures washed up on beaches, strangled or starved, or drowned long before they can free themselves.
The practice of ghostnet art, the harvesting and creative re-use of this marine detritus into woven forms and sculpture is an innovation in fibre art and conservation started around ten years ago in the remote Cape York communities of Pormpuraaw and Aurukun, home of Thaayorre, Kugu and Wik people, and Erub (Darnley) Island in the Torres Strait, home of Erubam le (people) from four tribal groups.
The intertwining of creativity, resourcefulness and necessity is partly thanks to the geographical position of these communities, as well as the skills and ingenuity of its male and female artists. Because of the tidal action and the impact of legal and illegal fishing activity in the seas and regions to its north, the Gulf of Carpentaria between Arnhem Land and Cape York is the area of Australia most affected by ghost nets.
Barramundi by Jill Yantumba. Pormpuraaw-Art and Culture Centre.
The fostering and expansion of ghostnet art has been a key activity for Ghostnets Australia (GNA), an alliance formed in 2004 of indigenous rangers, artists, researchers, fishers and environmentalists ―saltwater people―working together to reduce ghost nets.
While the problem of ghost nets reportedly became noticeable to the Indigenous people of the area in the mid-1990s, the first documentation of the nets being regarded and employed as artistic materials is between 2009 and 2011, with ‘mostly baskets and jewelry’ being made. Gradually however, experimentation evolved into the practice of making objects with ‘more complex shape and bigger size’, large-scale sculptures of the artists’ totems, such as crocodile, shark and turtle, representations of reef and shoreline, and of people.
Despite the breadth and ambition of this art form, the mechanisms (if not the process) that go into producing it are relatively modest. Anthropologist and ethnologist Dr Géraldine Le Roux notes that ‘ghostnet artistic practice requires few tools: knives, scissors, secateurs, netcutters and wire cutters are used to cut the nets, nylon and metal pieces. Needles are used to assemble the various elements … stitching is used both to assemble pieces and as a decorative detail’. Environmentally speaking, this low impact technology into high impact art.
For the Cape York and Torres Strait Indigenous people who practise it, ghostnet art is simply another visible and tangible expression of caring for country. Yet the artists and their communities recognise that their creativity can draw attention to the impact of marine pollution.
Worth noting also is that while fibre art globally is practised predominantly by female artists, some communities on the Sea of Carpentaria buck this trend; for example: ‘Pormpuraaw people have always been weavers—women and men’.
In Aurukun, north of Pormpuraaw however, ghostnet art is practised by the female artists. As Aurukun artist and cultural spokesperson Stanley Kalkeeyorta explains ‘the environment people … pick up this waste and we make them into good. It’s the ladies that make them good … the nets have power to kill. But then we draw that out and make it into this, and from the fishing net it becomes a food bowl’.
While there are isolated examples of artists making sculpture and jewellery from ghost nets in the UK for example, and Pakistan it is fair to say that the Indigenous peoples of north eastern Australia lead the world in this practice.
Coronation Coral Trout by David Holroyd, Pormpuraaw Art and Culture Centre.
And though this innovation in fibre art is still relatively new, ghostnet art is already in the Parliament House, the National Gallery of Australia, University of Queensland, British Museum, Queensland Art Gallery and the Australian Museum. Pieces have featured as part of Sculpture by the Sea in Bondi and Cottesloe. The world’s largest permanent installation
of ghostnet art is at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.
Minh Pinch or Barra by Eric Norman, Pormpuraaw Art and Culture Centre.
Human agency is vitally important in this alchemical transition from something that has become harmful into a new shape as something artistic, enlightening, and often whimsical. After all, nets are not intrinsically bad. Nets catch fish; nets are a source of sustenance. Ghost nets and ghost fishing, however, pervert this original purpose and design. The problem is caused by people; and people must find the solution. The manipulation, via human hands, of ghostnets into something of beauty, usefulness or humour helps take, as Kalkeeyorta says,‘the ‘killingness’’ out of the nets. ‘From a bad thing it’s transferring into a good thing. See, it’s part of culture. You can have bad culture, good culture. No more ghost net; instead, you have a bag full of apples, oranges or yams’.
Or you can have woven representations of turtles, dugong, whales, sharks; dolphin, seabirds, rays: forms that draw attention to what we risk losing to carelessness and our problematic relationship with our planet. Through pieces that are playful and engaging, yet which articulate deeply thoughtful and serious messages, ghostnet art practitioners are able to ‘create spaces of encounters between people who are not often connected: artists, fishermen and art lovers; Indigenous and non-Indigenous environmental activists’. Moreover, this offers another way for us to educate ourselves about and address the moral and environmental issues that collectively we face. If art is a new language, then this is one we can all learn to speak.