Maureen Ali | Frewa Bardaluna | Raylene Bonson
Dorothy Bunibuni | Alison Guwanjguwanj
Doreen Jinggarrabarra | Helen Kamajirr Stewart
Samantha Malkudja | Janet Marawarr
Susan Marawarr | Anniebell Marrngamarrnga
Jennifer Prudence | Jay Jurrupula Rostron
Yolanda Rostron |Deborah Wurrkidj
Jennifer Wurrkidj | Lena Yarinkura
Curated by Bronwyn Rennex in collaboration with Maningrida Arts & Culture and Bábbarra Designs
The Maningrida region in Arnhem Land is one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world. There are more than 12 distinct languages spoken by over 110 clan groups. The landscape is diverse too, covering over 7,000 square kilometres and ranging from saltwater coastal regions to rocky escarpments.
The artists in Lineage hail from across the region, and while each artwork embodies the singular vision and aesthetic of its maker, the works also reflect the physical and cultural diversity of the region. In the different styles and subjects, it is possible to see how the availability of raw materials and the influence of artistic legacies shapes creation. What unites the works, though, is the artists’ profound connection to Country, and djang.
Djang is an ongoing, eternal, life-giving transformative power that accounts for every aspect of existence. It also refers to the creation ancestor, the country where spirit resides, and to ceremonial designs and songs that represent that being. It is what powers our art.1
Their Country speaks to them and in turn, these artists speak to and about their Country, celebrating the vibrancy and significance of the natural and sacred worlds.
1 quoted at https://maningrida.com/artworks/
Through their innovations and bold re-interpretation of original forms, the artists in Lineage are sustaining and communicating their culture. The women of different generations represented here continue to work and inspire those emerging now. As artist Lena Yarinkura notes:
I have been teaching myself, I create new ways all the time. They are only my ideas … I pass my ideas on to my children and my grandchildren. It is important that I teach them, because one day I will be gone, and they will take my place. 2
In this exhibition, the artworks made from natural materials – pandanus, feathers, bark, dyes, jungle vines, ochres – have been sourced by the artists themselves and echo the landscape from which they are harvested. Creation begins with a knowledge – acquired and shared over generations – of where pandanus grows, of what plant will produce yellow dye, of how not to hurt your hands on the spines of the pandanus leaves.
I have been out with Doreen Jinggarrabarra while she harvested pandanus and dyes, and I have seen that
2 quoted at https://www.agsa.sa.gov.au/education/resources-educators/resources-educators/tarnanthi-2020-open-hands/lena-yarinkura/
knowledge in action. It is a highly specialised and quite physically demanding skill (I had blisters on my hands within minutes). What struck me, apart from Doreen’s stamina, expertise and adeptness with the hooked rod used to reach the centre of each tall pandanus plant, was the acuity of her vision. She could look down at the ground and see, in an instant, the thin leaves of a plant, which revealed underneath, bulbs for a particular colour. She could look out the window of a car bumping along a dirt road at 40km and see bush food on a tree a few hundred metres away – yell out ‘stop’, then make her way to harvest the treat, carrying it back to the car in the folds of her skirt. All I had seen was trees.
Jinggarrabarra was taught by her mother Elizabeth Mipilanggurr how to make mats, burlupurr (dilly bag), an-gujechiya (fish trap) and bamagora (woven shelter/ covering). Her works are ambitious, despite the simplicity of materials. The spectacular large mat in Lineage took her over two months to create. She doesn’t work in a studio or follow a written pattern; the work is designed in her head and Jinggarrabarra often works outside, under the shade of a mango tree, alongside friends, family and fellow artists.
The more you learn about the artworks of Maningrida, the more you can see. There are layers and layers of knowledge to uncover – about land and culture. You may start to recognise the natural colour palettes of different places in bark paintings, for instance, where subtly but surely, the differences in landscape and source material reveal themselves in tones ranging from mustard yellows and browns to dark reds and sunset pinks.
Or you may learn that, in the Aboriginal cosmology of Maningrida, much of the world belongs to one of two halves or moieties: duwa and yirridjdja 3. It is a system of kinship and connection that includes plants, animals, people, clans, ancestral beings and land. All are divided into one or the other moiety, yet all are interconnected. Even the different types of cockatoos that screech overhead at the Art Centre have distinct moieties.
Moiety is expressed in artwork too. Even colours are divided by moiety. As the renowned senior artist John Mawurndjul (brother of artist Susan Marawarr in this exhibition) noted in the catalogue for his recent retrospective:
“In the rock country, we can find the ochres there and pick them up. We grind them to produce the red colour. There are two colours,
a red one and a yellow one. The yellow is associated with the yirridjdja moiety and the red one is the duwa moiety, I am duwa moiety and so the red one is ours.”4
In Maningrida the tradition of mentoring artists is an incredibly important part of culture. Senior artists instruct the younger generation in stories, materials and techniques. Young artists hone their skills by watching from the sidelines, copying techniques, re-telling stories, practising their own skills on smaller works, and even working together with a senior artist on the same artwork. There are cultural protocols around the stories and designs an artist can use, which are taught during this apprenticeship.
Kuninjku artist Anniebell Marrngamarrnga exemplifies the combination of inherited knowledge, shared stories and a desire to experiment with form and expression, which is at the heart of the works in this exhibition. She learnt to weave from her mother Nancy Djulumba and started out making coiled baskets and twined bags. She later learnt how to paint from her husband Dick Nadjolorro. Her favourite subject is the yawkyawk
ngalkuburriyaymi (a female spirit, sometimes compared to European mermaids) who lives in the water at Kubumi. It is her husband’s djang. It was her idea to make flat weavings of yawkyawk though, adapting the technique she used to make twined bags and using an extended range of colours. Yawkyawk are strongly associated with fertility, and recent yawkyawk created by Marrngamarrnga, like the one in Lineage, seem to be carrying one or two babies.
Kune/Rembarrnga artist, Lena Yarinkura, also learnt the skills of weaving and coiling from her mother, Lena Djamarrayku. Yarinkura has been at the forefront of artists creating new idioms in fibre. In the 1990s she was one of the first Arnhem Land women to experiment with and adapt traditional techniques, to create her distinctive sculptural artworks. In some figures, the faces of the Wurum for instance, you can see how the skills used to make a basic dilly bag shape have been transformed, under Yarinkura’s artistic influence, into spritely figures.
She often works alongside her husband, senior artist Bob Burruwal or her daughter, Yolanda Rostron, in highly inventive collaborations. Their collective practice has expanded over years to include ambitious and sophisticated multimedia installations, enacting stories
about the people, plants, animals and ancestral beings of their outstation at Bolkdjam.
The artistic dynasty of the Kuninjku artists in this exhibition can be seen in the rrark designs they use in their works. Susan Marawarr, who works across many media including bark painting, printmaking and sculpture, is the daughter of Anchor Kalunba and Mary Wurrdjedje, and the sister of acclaimed Kuninjku bark painters James Iyuna and John Mawurndjul.
Like the other artists in her family, Marawarr uses fine crosshatching or rrark in many of her artworks. The design is an adaptation of one traditionally used in ceremonial body paintings. As with anything created by hand, the rrark artworks have the ‘signature’ of particular artists. Susan Marawarr’s work is distinguished by her monochrome rarrk patterning. Lineage, in these works, can be understood as both a cultural and stylistic legacy – one where the intricate line work adds dynamism and expressive power to the subject matter. *
While connection to Country is at the heart of these artworks, it can be expressed in subject matter ranging from the sacred to the everyday. Powerful ancestral beings related to an artist’s clan estate are frequently the
subject matter of artworks. For the Rembarrnga people of Central Arnhem Land, such as Lena Yarinkura and Yolanda Rostron, spirit beings such as Wurum and Wyarra are significant – but so are animals such as camp dogs and bandicoots. Yarinkura loves dogs. You can see her fondness for them, and the keenness of her observation, in the way her dog sculptures capture the gentle tilt of an ear or angle of a tail. Fabric printer Raylene Bonson is well-known for her designs depicting both ceremonial and everyday objects, in particular lorrkkon (hollow log for burial ceremony), kunmadj (dillybag) and mandjabu (conical fishtrap).
Some of the works in the exhibition encompass the practical and artistic. The an-gujechiya (fish trap) made by Burarra artist Maureen Ali, for instance, could be set in water to catch fish, yet within the gallery setting it becomes a beautiful, sinuous homage to her homeland and ancestors. Ali is particularly renowned for the use of mirlarl (malaisia scandens), a type of vine that grows in the coastal jungle. The ingenious conical design of the fish traps captures only larger fish, allowing smaller ones to escape, ensuring a future supply of fish. Helen
Kamajirr Stewart, another Burarra artist, created her fish trap using pandanus and natural dyes. Once again, an object that could be strung across a waterway to harvest fish becomes a testimony to the artist’s knowledge and
skill, and to her connection to the waters and land of her clan estate.
*
Women artists are a significant creative force within Maningrida. They are leaders at both Maningrida Arts and Culture Centre and Bábbarra Women’s Centre. The textile design arm of the Women’s Centre, Bábbarra Designs is one of the oldest continuously operating Indigenous textile enterprises in Australia.
Bábbarra Designs supports women to work off site and at their homelands including at a remotely located women’s centre at Buluhkadaru outstation. It also has women coming in to work at the Centre each day. From early morning Bábbarra is buzzing with activity. There is a 9-metre table for producing screen prints on site, other tables for lino printing, a bank of sewing machines at the rear of the room, screens being exposed in the sun out the back and finished fabric strung up to dry. Just next door to Bábbarra Designs there is an op-shop, retail store and laundromat run by the Bábbarra women. It really is a Centre – one that actively supports and creates opportunities for Aboriginal women in the community of Maningrida and on surrounding homelands.
Bábbarra Designs has enabled their artists to share their stories in new and exciting ways and with a huge new market. For the women artists of Maningrida in particular, the media of fibre art and textile design have opened up a range of expression. Senior Kuninjku artist Janet Marawarr, an established bark painter, regards textile design as an opportunity to work with colour and new methods to express her djang. She has recently embraced a new movement, where artists are cutting out symbols and printing in a free form placement on a range of textile surfaces.
Themes used in Bábbarra Designs artworks almost exclusively come from country and cultural connections. Sometimes they are graphic representations of cultural designs, such as Susan Marawarr’s rrark-like fabric prints. Other designs, such as Jay Jurrupula Rostron’s, tell a story. Her Namurre Bokko print tells of two brothers who were really strong leaders and good hunters, but through jealousy and suspicion, ended up being killed by another tribe.
The lino printed fabric in Lineage offers just a small introduction to the range of works emerging from Bábbarra Designs, where each length of fabric is unique and tells something of the artist’s life.
The creative experimentation branched out into working on paper in early 2021, when during the strange, slow months of Covid-19 lockdowns, the women from Bábbarra Designs participated in a drawing workshop at Maningrida Arts & Culture. Some of the works from that workshop are included in this exhibition and show how these talented artists move readily between media and means of expression.
The contemporary artists in Lineage are part of an artistic movement, that has developed in Maningrida and surrounding homelands over the past 50 years. They continue a tradition of bold experimentation in the expression of djang, transforming their raw materials into unique and arresting artworks. At the same time, they assert the dynamism and resilience of their culture, preparing the ground for future generations of artists to follow.
Bronwyn RennexPublished on the occasion of the exhibition
Lineage
30 May - 18 July, 2021
Curated by Bronwyn Rennex in collaboration with with Maningrida Arts & Culture and Babbarra Designs
Delmar Gallery
Trinity Grammar School
144 Victoria Street
Ashfield NSW 2131
Sydney - Australia
Curator: Catherine Benz
Gallery assistant: Christine Smalley
Copyright remains with the artists. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited. Exhibition installation photography by Silversalt.