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RISE 4: Women and Water in the Djelk Region
Opening: Saturday 6 July, 2 pm
Exhibition runs 6 July — 17 August 2024
Artists: Bábbarra Women’s Centre: Verity Bangarra, Raylene Bonson, Joy Garlbin, Janet Marawarr, Abigail Namundja, Jay Rostron, Elizabeth Wullunmingu, Deborah Wurrkidj, Lucy Yarawanga, Jocelyn Koyole. Maningrida Arts and Culture: Maureen Ali, Gloreen Campion, Joy Garlbin, Samantha Malkudja, Simone Namunjdja, Sonia Namarnyilk, Deborah Wurrkidj. Lucy Yarawanga.
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Glossary for Water
Kunronj (fresh water) Kuninjku, Kune language word for water.
Kábba (salt water) Ndjébbana language for the Kunibidji people.
Kábba na-múrrukkud Burarra language word for freshwater mixed with saltwater; the estuary.
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RISE 4: Women and Water in the Djelk Region reads shimmering artworks from Maningrida or Manayingkarirra in central Arnhem Land against the artists’ existential concern about threats to their ancestral land, sea, and waterways. This is the fourth in the RISE thematic series of exhibitions on the impacts of climate catastrophe. In keeping with the inspiration for many of the designs there are actual objects that are depicted in printed cloths in the exhibition, from objects like fishtrap to a basket (that may be symbolic), and from Barnkabarra (mud crabs) to a water bird, stingray, or barramundi (that may be ancestral).
The exhibition story offers a blueprint to protect and honour fragile land and water ecosystems under increasing threat from feral animals, noxious weeds and wildfire. More recent threats are from saltwater inundation of low-lying and freshwater habitats and approval of mining proposals including highly destructive fracking methods for accessing oil and gas reserves. The works cover the area lying between the Arnhem Land plateau and extends to the Arafura Sea — internationally renowned wetlands, monsoon rainforests, tropical savannas, rivers and estuaries that support significant collections of waterbirds and shorebirds — but excludes the inland stone country. This vast area is known as the Djelk Indigenous Protected Area, part of the National Reserve Estate, managed from the coastal town of Maningrida primarily for the sustainable use of natural ecosystems — as it has been managed by Aboriginal peoples for millennia.
Two of the nation’s longest-running community based Aboriginal art centres are based here: Bábbarra Womens’ Centre and Maningrida Arts and Culture. Each centre has a distinctive cultural and economic framework and media focus. Maningrida Arts and Culture or ‘MAC’, is celebrated for fine rrark-style bark painting and exquisite weaving. A case in point is the splendour of Mun-dirra or Fish Trap in Burarra (one of at least a dozen Indigenous languages spoken in Maningrida), a collaborative work by artists from MAC displayed to great acclaim in the NGV International Triennial in Melbourne late last year.
For three generations Bábbarra Womens’ Centre and its Bábbara Designs, both named after the sacred Bábbarra billabong, has played a vital role in visualising women’s social authority, and promoting artistic excellence. In a historically male-focused national Indigenous art world and contemporary gallery system, Bábbarra Designs is a beacon for the role of art in community building, intergenerational mentoring and resilience. Art is a means to define difference, mark social and geographic boundaries, substantiate claims to country and an income.[1]
This exhibition is the third from Maningrida at The Cross Art Projects [2] and expands the geographic and linguistic framework to include work by saltwater, freshwater, and the estuary where fresh meets salt water. Variously, water is called Kunronj (water) in Kuninjku and Kune by inland and freshwater families represented here by artists Deborah Wurrkidj, Abigail Namundja, Janet Marawarr, Jay Jurrupula Rostron (Kune) and Raylene Bonson. Kábba is water in Ndjébbana language for the saltwater families of the Kunibidji people. Kábba na-múrrukkud is freshwater mixed with saltwater or the estuary, the Burarra word for water, represented here by artists Joy Garlbin, Belinda Kernan and Verity Bangarra
In the studio, senior artists and teachers Joy Garlbin, Deborah Wurrkidj, Janet Marawarr and Elizabeth Wullunmingu have the authority to channel their cultural knowledge and connections to country and activate new cultural expressions emerging from djang (the creative power that resides in ancestral country). These alchemists evoke customary ways and practices and experiment with visual forms to constantly re-invent the contemporary.
Each Bábbarra studio linocut print is a unique artwork (a metre in many colours may take one to two days) while woodblock-printed textiles can be more expressionistic (not working to a gridded format). Screen prints, on the other hand, have a more regular repeat pattern, like Deborah Kamanj Wurrkidj’s ‘Kunmadj’, a textile depicting a large woven collecting basket made from the burney vine (Trophis scandens), used to collect heavy foods, such as fish caught in conical fish traps.
Present in all artworks from each art centre are the country’s palette of dense paper bark forest, freshwater rivers and seasonal floodplains, home to file snakes and saltwater crocodiles, and the inter-tidal zone were marine turtles breed and along the coastline the multiple species supported by the mangrove forests. The design variations reflect these different language groups, country, and clans.
The installation features barks painted with natural pigments by Deborah Wurrkitj and Sonia Namarnyilk beside natural fibre weavings coloured by bush dye usually a striking yellow – gold hue from the root of the man-kurdudjumuk plant (Coelospermum reticulatum). The root is shaven into a pot of boiling water and to release the colour. Ash sprinkled into the mix creates beautiful orange tones. Not all is from the earth as also included are brilliantly coloured drawings on paper made during Covid lockdown. A drawing by Joy Garlbin depicts Djómi Billabong a women’s site and also the namesake of Maningrida’s Djómi Museum established in the 1970s to house cultural collections of national and international significance.
Some artworks express the power of country itself and conceptually merge the natural and spiritual worlds, others focus on the ancestral activities that created it or inhabit it: the powerful Rainbow Serpent Ngalyod, female water spirits including Yawkyawk and jin-Merdewa, and spirit beings such as mimih, Namorrorddo and Wangarra. The gridded rarrk designs on barks and shifting colours in the printed textiles interpret a metaphysical experience with country—which in essence works to bring together the experience of ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ phenomena.
Land and sea country is primarily inherited from one’s father (patrilineal) but responsibilities for land and resource management also come from one’s mother’s traditional estate (matrilineal). Managers of the land through their mother’s country are called Djungkay. Some Landowners and Djungkay are worried that traditional knowledge is being slowly eroded and the bush is under threat from extreme unhealthy fire, feral animals (pigs, buffalo) that make water undrinkable, while along the coast, fisheries are depleted and, as everywhere, sea levels are rising.
International recognition for remote women’s art is illustrated in the book and exhibition Aboriginal Screen-Printed Textiles from Australia’s Top End published by the Fowler Museum at UCLA (2020), which showcased Bábbarra Designs as one of a small group of five Indigenous textile producing art centres that design, print and sew onsite in community. Sitting with Injalak Arts in Arnhem Land, Tiwi art centres Jilamara and Tiwi Designs and Merrepen Arts on the Daly River, Bábbarra Designs is the only ‘women only’ art centre.
A Bábbarra Designs initiative is the exhibition Jarracharra /Dry Season Winds, presented in Paris, the Middle East and New Delhi in March 2023 and touring to five Indian cities. Janet Marawarr and Deborah Wurrkidj were present at the Indian Museum, Kolkata and travelled to Bangalore to participate in a workshop at Tharangini Studio where the artists revived their lino designs onto woodblock and explored eco-friendly printing methods on Indian silks. A collaborative work indigo discharge silk cotton sari, titled ‘Karrbarda, Ngalkordow and Kunred (Country)’, by Janet Marawarr and Deborah Wurrkidj is included in the exhibition. Tharangini Studio is collaborating with Bábbarra Designs and Indian curators to prepare an exhibition for the Bangalore International Centre in September 2024.
Notes
- Jon Altman and Appolline Kohen, Mumeka to Milmilngkan. Innovation in Kurulk Art, Canberra: Drill Hall Gallery, 2006. Jon Altman, Mumeka to Milmilngkan: Innovation in Kurulk Art, 2006, p.26 and Jon Altman, mane djang karirra: the place where the dreaming changed shape, Flinders University Museum of Art in association with Tarnanthi Festival, 2023.
- Báb-barra: Women Printing Culture (2017). Artists: Raylene Bonson, Lenni Goya- Airra, Jennifer Gandjalamirriwuy, Melba Gunjarrwanga, Linda Gurawana, Belinda Kernan, Belinda Kuriniya, Helen Lanyinwanga, Janet Marawarr, Susan Marawarr, Elizabeth Wullunmingu, Deborah Wurrkidj, Jennifer Wurrkidj and Lucy Yarawanga, at The Cross Art Projects, 4 November to 16 December 2017. Karrang Kunred / Mother-Land. Artists: Susan Marawarr, Mrs J. Wurrkidj & Deborah Wurrkidj, The Cross Art Projects, 20 April to 30 June 2018.
- Four Bábbarra artists will travel to India to co-create textiles during an extended workshop at Tharangini Studio supported by the Centre for Australia–India Relations. Other collaborations are licenced to Publisher Textiles in Sydney and to milliner Helen Kaminski in 2024.
Jocelyn Koyole, Yawkyawk, Djenj, Berelh, 2023, fibre-tipped pen on paper, 54 x 75 cm (#624-23)
Maningrida language map
Notes
Maningrida is an Anglicised version of the Kunibidji name Manayingkarirra, from the phrase ‘mane djang karrira’, meaning ‘the place where the Dreaming changed shape.’ The township (population 1700), sits at the mouth of the Liverpool River in north-central Arnhem Land. Maningrida and its dynamic 30 family outstations is the hub for the Djelk Indigenous Protected Region (Djelk IPA): an area of 7000 square kilometres. The area has an unbroken history of Indigenous use and management. The Djelk Rangers founded in 1991 operate out of Maningrida and service the Djelk IPA. Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation sponsors the rangers and the art centres MAC and Babbarra and Djomi Museum.
People here speak many different languages (more than 12). Along the coast from east to west there are four principal languages, Burrara, Nakara, Ndjébbana and Kunbarlang. In the central part on the headwaters of the Cadell River, Kunartpa and Gurrgoni are the two main languages while in the lower Mann-Liverpool Rivers area Kuninjku predominates. In the far south and south-east, Kune, Dalabon and Rembarrnga are the main languages spoken.
Bábbarra Womens’ Centre was founded in 1983 as a women’s refuge with a vision for Maningrida women’s rights and agency. Bábbarra is a word in the Ndjébbana language of the Kunibídji people on whose Country the community of Maningrida lies. It is the name of a place belonging to the Dukúrrdji clan. Bábbarra Designs emerged in the early 2000s.
Babbarra Designs holds regular training workshops: lino-block printing and etching were delivered by Jayne Nankivell in 1998-99 and since then there have been ongoing workshops with silk-screen textile designer Bobbie Ruben from 2003. Babbarra Womens Centre now has more than 80 screen-print designs by 35 artists, one of the largest collections of Aboriginal textile designs in Australia. Bábbarra Womens’ Centre continues to run an op-shop and laundry and services women’s centres in five outstations. Through the Bábbarra Women’s Governance Group, the artists lobby for better health services and housing, for environmental protection against fracking, and to support return to one the 30 family homelands supported from Maningrida.
References
- Aboriginal Screen-Printed Textiles from Australia’s Top End published by the Fowler Museum essays by Barrkman, Janet Marawarr, Lucy Yarawanga and Janita Yikara Wright, Felicity. See: Michelle Culpitt, Ingrid Johanson and Karin Riederer, ‘Bábbarra Women’s Centre: By Women for Women,’ pp. 118-145.
- ANKA, Talking Up Textiles: Community Fabric and Indigenous Industry. Stories from the Forum in Gunbalanya, Darwin August 2012.
- Manburrba: Our story of printed cloth from Babbarra Women’s Centre, Charles Darwin University Art Gallery, Darwin 2023. Essays by Joanna Barrkman, Janet Marawarr, Lucy Yarawanga and Janita Yikara.
- Dianne Moon (curator), Fine Lines: works of ornamentation and decoration by Maningrida Artists. Exhibition bringing together works made by women from Maningrida in the 1980s, 1999. A showcase of The Maningrida Collection of Aboriginal Art of approximately 600 works held in trust for the people of Maningrida by Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
- Hetti Perkins, Crossing Country: The Alchemy of Western Arnhem Land Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2004. Exhibition catalogue. See: Jon Altman, “Brokering Kuninjku Art: Artists, Institutions and the Market.”
- Luke Taylor, Seeing the Inside: Bark painting in western Arnhem Land, 1996, Oxford.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the artists especially Deborah Wurrkitj and Janet Marawarr; Babbarra managers Jessica Stallenberg and new manager Ziian Carey; MAC (manager Brooke Ainscrow and assistant manager Kelly Butler); Ingrid Johanson for advice and Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation. The Cross Art Projects: Susan Hackett (textile workshop), Phillip Boulten, Belle Blau, Ace Bourke, Kai Mokotow Den Hartog.
The artists are represented by Maningrida Arts and Culture (bark and fibre) and Babbarra Women’s Centre (textiles).