Circular time: Connecting with kin, community and memory

Freja Carmichael

Ritual: The past in the present embodies the interconnected relationship that exists between past and present time across Country, lands, waters and nations. This group exhibition creates a shared space where the customs, ideas and stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people converge with artists from the Asia and Pacific regions through artistic manifestations of ritual practices. The featured artists communicate how spiritual, historical, physical and contemporary engagements with ceremonial understandings and processes align with their ancestral origins and traditions of place. With their inherent groundings in the past, this collection of works celebrates the vitality of today’s expressions of cultural identity and experience.

This essay discusses the work of participating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists in this exhibition, who include community Elders and leaders, family groups and senior artists working in collaboration with collective memory, or with their kin and community, to nurture, honour and proudly share their heritage in visual contexts. These artists are Simone Arnol and Bernard Singleton Jnr, Elisa Jane Carmichael, Janet Fieldhouse, Carl Fourmile, Dale Harding with Hayley Matthew, Naomi Hobson, Heather Wunjarra Koowootha, Peggy Kasabad Lane, Grace Lillian Lee, Stephen George Page AO, Alair Pambegan, Arthur Koo’ekka Pambegan Jr, Brian Robinson, Joel Sam, and Dr Christian Thompson AO. Also contextualised in this text is the cross-cultural installation, Fijian Tevutevu Ceremony of Wilfred and Ada Bowie.

The many rituals represented by these artists show the diversity, complexity and strength of cultural practices that are alive in adaptive knowledges and traditions. This is explored in video, installation, sculpture, photography, print and drawing mediums that describe diverse rituals surrounding life cycles, healing and renewing, and spiritual practices. The collection of artworks naturally overlaps and intertwines with the varying perspectives inherent in each artist’s cultural background.

> Vilimone Baleilevuka MATAIWAI Vatani, Kaba, Fiji

Born Fiji, 1967 Fijian Tevutevu Ceremony of Wilfred & Ada Bowie 2018

Life cycles relate to the ceremonies that Ancestors have long practised to mark important passages of time for individuals and community, including initiations, weddings and death. Anchoring this theme and the exhibition’s overall focus on crosscultural intersections is the installation Fijian Tevutevu Ceremony of Wilfred and Ada Bowie 2018-21, which recreates the 2018 wedding of Wilfred and Ada Bowie. The installation comprises material culture and documentation of this ceremony that united Fijian, Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal traditions—representing the heritages of both Wilfred and Ada.

< Peggy Kasabad LANE Saibal Koedal Awgadthaigal

Born Thursday Island, Queensland, 1981 Tombstone unveiling of Mrs Keru Isua 2018

Adorning the space is a large hanging traditional Fijian bark cloth and floor mats that symbolise important elements of the Fijian Tevutevu ceremony (meaning ‘spreading of the mats’). These visuals are accompanied by a selection of photographs that re-tell the symbolic presentations of Fijian traditions, together with cultural sharing by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members through performance. This joyous exchange through the Fijian Tevutevu ceremony celebrates the transmission of customary practices, supported by the dynamic relationships across family, community and cultures.

Also conveying current community experiences is Naomi Hobson’s (Southern Kaantju and Umpila) January First series 2020-21, and Peggy Kasabad Lane’s (Saibal Koedal Awgadthaigal) video work Tombstone Unveiling of Mrs Keru Isua 2017. Hobson’s January First series shows the practices that have emerged through bonds and trust between family, community and place. Hobson is from Coen, located on Cape York Peninsula, Far North Queensland. Working with her community, she has photographed multiple generations participating in the ritual of applying white material (clay, powder or flour) to the faces of customary relatives at New Year’s time. This act is both symbolic of renewing and celebrating relationships, while also offering time for reflection on entering a new cycle. The candid individual images portray grandparents, godparents, cousins and grandchildren taking part in this practice in their homes and in everyday life. These captured moments actively express how cultural connections manifest and are continued in the spaces where family and community meet, gather, share and connect.

Using imagery and sound, Lane’s video work recounts a Torres Strait Islander tombstone opening ceremony as part of honouring the life of the deceased and acknowledging they have reached their final resting place. Lane divides the film into two screens, revealing different actions of the ceremony in both the organisation and delivery of those events, leading to the final unveiling of the tombstone. This footage emphasises the different involvement of people - preparing food, creating ceremonial wear, decorating the ceremonial site, and performing song and dance. The widespread inclusion of community represented illuminates the importance of kinship ties binding families together across the Torres Strait Island region.

Similarly, my sister Elisa Jane ‘Leecee’ Carmichael (Ngugi, Quandamooka) offers a personal reflection on experiences surrounding the passing of loved ones - family and Elders - through combining Quandamooka weaving practices with video work. Her film represents healing processes and honouring the spirit of loved ones on Country. This is told by moving imagery of our sacred waters, animals, plants, trees and transitions of time from sunrise to sunset. Overlaying this footage are cultural stories and songs shared by Senior Quandamooka songman Buangan Joshua Walker, of the Nunakul Tribe. His spoken words and song speak to how the spiritual life, Country, land, seas and skies are all interconnected. These meanings are further instilled by the presence of a large, coiled basket woven with ugaire, reeds that grow on Country in fresh water of Minjerribah. This form represents a vessel that holds and carries memories and stories of loved ones. By weaving with living material of Country, and drawing upon generational knowledge, Leecee reminds us that the spirit of people always remains with place.

Torres Strait Islander artist Grace Lillian Lee also invigorates ancestral weaving practices in contemporary approaches. Lee’s collection of sculptural dresses responds to the transformations of Torres Strait Islander ceremonial clothing through the arrival of missionary activity and Christianity. Traditional ceremonial dress—including woven skirts created from pandanus and coconut fibre—was replaced with the introduction of a long, loose-fitting, body-covering dress, often referred to as the ‘Mother Hubbard’ dress1. This style of clothing remains in the Torres Strait region today and has evolved to feature brightly coloured floral-patterned fabrics representative of the islands’ rich land and sea environments.

> Elisa Jane CARMICHAEL Ngugi/Quandamooka

Born Brisbane, Queensland, 1987 Jarah (detail) 2021

Experimenting with materials, form and symbolism, Lee’s collection of alluring ceremonial- wedding wear integrates past and present links with Torres Strait Islander expression and traditions. In the Future Floral Woven Forms series 2020, coconut leaf fibres are woven into the check weaving technique that is commonly used in the making of mats, baskets and dance armbands. This weaving method is combined with prawn weaving, taught to the artist by her mentor, Uncle Ken Thaiday. Lee shapes these techniques into items that include wearable oversized flower forms. The symbolic use of flowers in her designs relates to imagery on current island style dresses, and the decorations and adornments used in Torres Strait Islander ceremonial practices. Interweaving with the themes of life cycles, is the representation of healing and renewal rituals that embed connections to Country and all-embracing relationships with lands, waters, skies and living things. Heather Wunjarra Koowootha (WikMungkan/Djabuguy/Yidinji) details holistic knowledges specific to the environment of her ancestral Country, through the specific application of natural materiality in medicinal rites. Her prints on paper draw upon her Yidinji and Wik Mungkan family teachings and memory to create a visual index of the wide variety of trees, herbs and flowers used in ritual, including for health, birth, women’s business, marriage and death ceremonies. Each drawing offers a reminder of layered interconnections existing between people, lands, waters and all living beings. For example, Cheese Fruit 2020 expresses how the cheese fruit plant is applied to the skin to treat colds and infections, particularly around the time of the wet season in the Cape York area.2 The stories and lived experiences bound to each plant are cited in Koowootha’s hand-written texts that accompany each work. The individual stories are vividly illustrated in bright colour palettes and energetic shapes that celebrate the vitality of the plants and the knowledge that continues to transcend years, seasons, and many lifetimes of experience.

Similarly, the collaborative work of Simone Arnol (Gunggandji) and Bernard Singleton Jnr (Umpila, Djabugay/Yirrgay) titled Medicine Clay 2019-20, also relays traditional medicine practices. Ochre holds ceremonial and cultural significance across many Aboriginal nations and communities, as it embodies a spirited connection to Country and place. This series of digital prints highlights the power of clay in healing for health and wellbeing practices, while also honouring the teaching that Singleton Jnr’s mother imparted surrounding these rituals. The intimate portraits represent three generations—Singleton Jr, his father and his niece—engaging

< Grace Lillian LEE

Born Cairns, Queensland, 1988 Future Floral Woven Forms (detail) 2020

in medicine clay knowledge through the immersive application of earth material onto the body. Each clay marking on the individual holds different meanings to different family members’ experiences with teachings and use of medicinal knowledge. The portraits show variations of white and red clay being absorbed into skin and body as a metaphoric representation of the knowledge that is transferred between generations. Focusing on the face and body, the images invoke different spiritual and physical emotions as part of the act of healing and embracing family wisdom.

The cleansing and spiritual importance of clay is also depicted in the film Spear 2015 by Stephen George Page AO (Nunukul and Munaldjali). This video tells a story of a young Aboriginal man named Djali navigating his Aboriginal existence in the present day. Returning to practices surrounding life cycles, the opening sequence in this film depicts an initiation ceremony where Djali’s body is washed with water and his forehead is painted with white ochre. Smoke is then used to cleanse his body and spirit before he continues on his personal journey of finding his own strength in the world3. Featuring minimal dialogue, the complete narrative is told through song, dance and imagery. The focus on oral traditions and movement reiterates the intrinsic role of song and dance in ceremony, and more broadly as an important means of cultural transmission.

Performance is also a significant feature in the work of Carl Fourmile (Yidinji). His installation, Wunjuu Bayal 2020 (meaning smoking ceremony in Yindinji language), acknowledges cultural practices surrounding fire, smoke, and ceremony through his assemblage of hand-carved clapstick and long flat boomerang forms. The variety of wooden instruments are placed in a circular arrangement to represent the gathering of people and community as part of smoking ceremonies. The social and performative nature of these ceremonies is activated in a sound piece that reverberates within the installation. The recording by Fourmile and his Aunty Teresa Dewar, features sounds of the environment, crackling fire, clapsticks and language songs.

For many Aboriginal nations, smoking ceremonies can link with welcoming to Country, acknowledgment of Ancestors, and as part of cleansing place and people rituals. While this is a shared understanding across Country and communities, Fourmile’s representation is grounded in the specifics of his cultural heritage. The different wooden forms are shaped and inscribed with designs and markings unique to his Yidinji ancestral traditions.

> Heather Wunjarra KOOWOOTHA Wik-Mungkan/Yidinji/Djabugay

Born Cairns, Queensland, 1966 Cheese Fruit - Marinda Citrifolia Bunumiey, at The South East CostLe Side to the Cape York and the GuLF ReginaL area 2019-2020

The link between mark making, ceremony and Country is also told in the intergenerational work of the late, revered lawman, Elder and father, Arthur Koo’ekka Pambegan Jr (1936-2010), and his son Alair Pambegan (both Wik-Mungan). Pambegan Jr’s installation Bonefish Story Place 2007-08 communicates his custodianship for Walkaln-aw (Bonefish Story Place) and Kalben (Flying Fox Story Place) - two significant ancestral story places and associated narratives for the Winchanam clan, who live along the Archer River on Wik-Mungan Country4 .

The story of Bonefish Story Place is about two brothers who travelled from the tip of Cape York in search of a place to call home, only to meet a tragic end and become transformed into bonefish. Similarly, Flying Fox Story Place ‘tells the story of two brothers undergoing initiation rites. A major part of these rites involves not hunting certain animals. The brothers broke this rule by sneaking out of ceremony and killing hundreds of flying foxes.’5 The two brothers admitted their wrongdoing and were punished by their Ancestors for breaking the rules. These ancestral stories impart the enduring reminder of Wik-Mungan traditional law and protocol, embedded in the great respect for the land and its people. This law was taught to Pambegan Jr by his father, who in turn handed it onto Alair.

Connected with the Bonefish and Flying Fox stories is the knowledge of ceremonial visual traditions. The Bonefish Story Place installation reimagines carving techniques used in ancestral ceremonial sculpture and the Winchanam body designs to create large-scale forms. Three logs are carved and shaped from milkwood to build a standing structure that suspends varying sized bonefish. The logs and bonefish are painted in variations of ceremonial body paint designs, in iconic red, white and black colours that reference the artists’ Country - red bauxite cliffs and white sandy beaches.

Alair inherits the responsibility for continuing important ancestral stories maintained by his father. In his series of paintings, ceremonial body paint designs and the symphony of red, white and black colours are united onto canvas in strong linear and geometric patterns. This father and son collaboration illustrates the importance of senior artists passing vital cultural knowledge on to their next generation. Pambegan honours his father’s legacy through his own innovative approach to maintain cultural narratives and artistic traditions.

< Carl FOURMILE Yidinji

Born Muluridji, Queensland, 1979 Wunjuu Bayal 2020

> Alair PAMBEGAN Wik-Mungkan

Born Aurukun, Queensland, 1966 Bonefish Man & Dancing Spirit Man - Winchanam Ceremonial Dance 2020

>> Arthur Koo’ekka PAMBEGAN Jnr Wik-Mungkan

Born Aurukun, Queensland, 1936 died Aurukun, Queensland, 2010 Bonefish Story Place, 2007–08

Intergenerational sharing is also central to the making of Dale Harding’s (Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal) work, As I Remember It (H1) 2020. Harding collaborated with his cousin Hayley Matthew (Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal) to create the four-panel painting on paper that embodies their lineages of rock art traditions at Carnarvon Gorge in Central Queensland. In this work, the variations of golden-yellow tones associate with light transformations on sandstone walls at Carnarvon Gorge. Like the natural light that endures and shifts across this special site, Harding’s recent work links to ritual through the process of extending his people’s culturally distinct practices. The stories and traditions belonging to Harding’s family and community are continued through the act of making and using new visionary forms that are grounded in tradition. Vital to this way of working and giving expression, is the embedding of collective action through the involvement of family to communicate shared stories, which in turn nurture cultural knowledge and guide new ways ahead of telling their cultural inheritances.

The final linking theme of spiritual practices looks to thoughts and ways of reconnecting knowledge and maintaining deep bonds between people and Ancestors. For some of the artists featured in this exhibition, family and personal experiences speak of loss or the interruption in practices through prolonged colonisation and complex histories. However, their stories of loss are consolidated through journeys of regenerating ancestral memory via visual and oral language, practices and forms. The meaning of these reconnections is in turn an act of ceremonial connection. Transcendent links are also explored through the memory and meaning of materials and forms that invoke spirited relationships across time and generations.

Dr Christian Thompson AO (Bidjara) employs sound to call upon his traditional language in his three-channel video work Berceuse 2017. The video intimately focusses on Thompson’s face, eyes and movement of his mouth as he sings a berceuse—a cradle song or lullaby—that combines chanting and electronic elements as an expression of his Bidjara language. This work reflects upon his language being categorised as extinct, and speaks of the histories of silenced languages, and the loss of language as a result of colonisation and assimilation polices. In the present, many First Nations people are in the process of proudly re-storing and re-activating their languages across different modes. Thompson’s poetic reciting of the words of his Ancestors, in his own form of expression, offers an empowering and healing rite.

> Dale HARDING with Hayley MATTHEW Dale HARDING Bidjara/Ghungalu/Garingbal

Born Moranbah, Queensland, 1982

Hayley MATTHEW Bidjara/Ghungalu/Garingbal

Born Rockhampton, Queensland, 1988 As I remember it (H1) 2020

^ Dr Christian THOMPSON AO Bidjara

Born Gawler, South Australia, 1974 Berceuse 2017

In their individual artworks, Torres Strait Islander artists Janet Fieldhouse (Kala Lagaw Ya and Meriam Mir language), Brian Robinson (Maluyligal, Wuthathi and Dayak) and Joel Sam (Sui Baidam), highlight the spiritual, ancestral and physical importance of cultural objects in ceremonial and religious rites. Fieldhouse combines the medium of clay with fibre practices to create direct and allusive expressions of her people’s stories that manifest cultural practices and relationships with land and sea. In particular, Silent Dancer (Rattle) 2020 and Comb Dance 1-3 2020, are inspired by objects associated with Torres Strait Islander song and dance. Plant seeds, such as Kalup, are commonly used to make dance rattles for creating sound and rhythm. Fieldhouse reinterprets the use of these seeds through a cluster of woven vessels that swing low and are attached to a central long strand of fibre that connects to a sturdy circular clay handle. The large-scale size accentuates the energy and spirit these objects create in dance movement. Similarly, Comb Dance 1–3 expands on adornments that are worn and are associated with dance traditions. Fastened to the ceramic comb form is a small detail of check weaving technique (also discussed in Grace Lillian Lee’s work). In making these works, Fieldhouse reflects ‘she has never physically performed Torres Strait songs and dance’.6 These works are a way of connecting with performative practices through materiality, while also acknowledging their enduring role in Torres Strait Islander identity.

Fieldhouse’s sculptural pieces draw largely from her ongoing research into the material culture of Torres Strait Islander people through museum collections, as well as the oral histories that have been handed down to her. Similarly, Robinson’s Arcãnus Curio 2020 series engages with historical ritual objects held in museum collections. The material culture of First Nations People, which are stored in collections around the world, were often amassed forcibly and under problematic circumstances from their communities of origin. These items are woven with memory, thousands of years old. They are carved and shaped with experiences of time and painted and inscribed with lineage to Country and place. Through First Nations artistic practices, ancestral forms are visually repatriated, while also maintaining traditions, knowledge and stories inherent in these materials, for the next generation.

^ Brian ROBINSON Maluyligal/Wuthathi/Dayak

Born Thursday Island, Queensland, 1973 Wene-wenel gaugau mawa (Torres Strait) 2018

^ Joel SAM SUI BAIDAM

Born Thursday Island, Queensland, 1977 Umau Dhoeri Mawa 2020

Robinson’s hand-drawn images of powerful cultural objects— including dance masks, charms and domestic objects—provide a rich acknowledgement of spiritual and ancestral qualities that extend beyond the physical form. This series continues Robinson’s investigation into shared ideas and exchange across cultures, by focussing on intersections between traditional land custodians of the Pacific Islands through their ritual objects. In realistic depictions, Robinson portrays cultural objects that embody sacred or symbolic meanings that are linked closely to the spiritual world. The style of drawing applied is similar to a blueprint or design drawing, where attention is directed to the threedimensional form and the technical making of each object. This intimate examination offers an understanding of the many layers of meanings and stories attached to each form, and what they may invoke or offer a connection to.

Joel Sam’s sculptural wall installation titled Kulba Igilinga (Old Culture) 2020, also represents powerful cultural objects through an array of ceremonial Dhoeri (Dhari, Dhibal) headdresses with masks. Exclusive to the Torres Strait, headdresses are customarily made and worn by males during ceremony to evoke the spiritual and natural worlds and are now commonly used in dance performances.7 Sam’s collection is inspired by ceremonial contexts and the motifs and styles of the Saibai Island region. The Dhoeris are made from an abundance of feathers and adorned with shells, seeds and fibres in four different colours with significant meaning.

The green-coloured feather Dhoeri is worn for the protection of the garden against evil spells; the brown is used for a plentiful harvest; the blue calls upon a good hunt and weather conditions; and the black symbolises death in ritual processes. The performative nature of these headdresses is expanded upon through Sam’s inclusion of the masks, charms and functional materials. His blue Dhoeri is accompanied by a small dugout canoe, harpoon (warup) and dugong charm that link to sea hunting activities. Through this collection of animated headdresses, the artist shares how culture beliefs and responsibilities to land and sea custodianship are sung, danced and performed into being.

In her poem The Past, distinguished poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal of Minjerribah writes, ‘Let no one say the past is dead. The past is all about us and within.’ In Ritual: The past in the present, the meaning of these words reverberate across the collection of works through the powerful presence of Country, place, community, kin, language, song, dance – all of which link to ancestral ties. In this grounded sharing of stories and cultural beliefs, we can see, hear and experience how rituals continue to transcend time, generation and knowledge. This movement between spiritual, physical and temporal also echoes in processes and production of each artwork, where artists transform their inherent practices and personal or collective stories into their own visionary approaches. It is all of these acts of engaging, collaborating, sharing and performing that carry and continue knowledge forward for our many generations to come.

end notes

1. Louise Hamby and Valarie Kirk, ‘Seafarer People and Their Textiles from Erub Arts, Torres Strait, Australia,’ Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings 989 (2016): https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1971&context=tsaconf. 2. Heather Koowootha, Cheese Fruit - Marinda Citrifolia Bunumiey, at The South East CostLe Side to the Cape York and the GuLF ReginaL area, 2019-2020, watercolour and pen on paper, 76 x 56 cm

3. Australian Teachers of Media, Spear Study Guide, Metro magazine: St Kilda, Victoria, n.d. https://issuu.com/bangarra/docs/spear_study_guide_755ea3f7966591. 4. Bruce Johnson McLean, ‘Alair Pambegan,’ in The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 2018), pp. 127.

5. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, ‘Arthur Koo’ekka Pambegan Jr Flying Fox Story Place 2002–2003,’ 26 August 2020, https://learning.qagoma.qld.gov.au/artworks/flying-fox-story-place/.

6. Janet Fieldhouse, conversation with the author, August 2020. 7. Kelli Cole and Teho Ropeyarn, ‘Ken Thaiday Senior,’ in Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, ed. Tina Baum (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2017), pp. 118.