This is my country out in Utopia an outstation called Soapy Bore it’s my Father’s country, there’s big soakage, hills, bush medicine and bush tucker. All my family paint, my grandmother, my mother and aunties. I like to paint, I think about my country, the colours and my family who have gone.
The community of Ampilatwatja made a conscious decision not to paint altyerr (dreaming stories). The artists paint their country where those stories sit.
Fibre Art is an ancient Aboriginal women’s craft that is still made today using the same techniques as their ancestors. Making fibre art is labour intensive and much care and fine needlework is required to ensure the finished object is both functional and beautiful. Fibre art from Ghunmarn Culture Centre includes dilly bags, floor mats, bush fans, woven creatures found in the landscape, plants such as yams (bush potato), baskets, place mats, and spirit figures such as mermaids and Mukuys. Natural pandanus fibre (Mukarra), is used to make much of the fibre art produced by the artists of Djilpin Arts. Women collect the pandanus by pulling from the top of the pandanus tree, then stripping and drying the leaves before they are dyed with natural bush colour collected from the Beswick surrounds.
Throughout the 1990s, artists Lena Yarinkura and her mother Lena Djammarrayku (now deceased) diverged from the more conventional fibre work of their contemporaries, extending traditional weaving techniques and materials to make new ambitious and innovative sculptural forms. Yarinkura applied the dilly bag, fish trap and coil basket weaving techniques to make the body of new forms, such as djamo (dog), yok (bandiboot) and yawkyawk (female water spirit), which she then filled with paperbark and painted with ochre. Yarinkura and her husband Bob Burruwal have also become renowned for their distinctive spirit figures, including wurum and wyarra, which are often displayed as part of large installations. In using her weaving skills to make three-dimensional representations, Yarinkura has adapted a traditional weaving technique to explore new narrative possibilities for expressing important cosmological themes or illustrating stories from her homeland. Yarinkura and Burruwal’s children, grandchildren and extended family, including Yolanda Rostron, Philimena Kelly, Vera Cameron and Gloreen Campion, continue this legacy.
Fibre Art is an ancient Aboriginal women’s craft that is still made today using the same techniques as their ancestors. Making fibre art is labour intensive and much care and fine needlework is required to ensure the finished object is both functional and beautiful. Fibre art from Ghunmarn Culture Centre includes dilly bags, floor mats, bush fans, woven creatures found in the landscape, plants such as yams (bush potato), baskets, place mats, and spirit figures such as mermaids and Mukuys. Natural pandanus fibre (Mukarra), is used to make much of the fibre art produced by the artists of Djilpin Arts. Women collect the pandanus by pulling from the top of the pandanus tree, then stripping and drying the leaves before they are dyed with natural bush colour collected from the Beswick surrounds.
The Lorrkon or bone pole coffin ceremony is the final ceremony in a sequence of mortuary rituals celebrated by the people of Arnhem Land. This ceremony involves the placing of the deceased’s bones into a hollow log decorated with painted clan designs and ceremonially placed into the ground where it remains until it slowly decays over many years.
The log is made from a termite hollowed Stringybark tree (Eucalyptus tetradonta) and is decorated with totemic emblems. The western Arnhem Land version of the Lorrkon ceremony involves the singing of sacred songs to the accompaniment of karlikarli, a pair of sacred boomerangs used as rhythm instruments. During the final evening of the ceremony, dancers decorate themselves with kapok down, or today, cotton wool and conduct much of the final segments of the ceremony in the secrecy of a restricted men’s camp. The complete ceremony may stretch over a period of two weeks, but on the last night the bones of the deceased, which have been kept in bark or wrapped in cloth, are taken out, painted with red ochre and placed inside the hollow log. This ceremony may take place many years after the person has died.
At first light on the final morning of the Lorrkon ceremony, the men appear, coming out of their secret bush camp carrying the pole towards the women’s camp. The two groups call to each other using distinct ceremonial calls. The women have prepared a hole for the pole to be placed into and when it is stood upright, women in particular kinship relationships to the deceased dance around the pole in a jumping/shuffling motion. The Lorrkon is then often covered with a tarpaulin and left to slowly decay.
Fibre Art is an ancient Aboriginal women’s craft that is still made today using the same techniques as their ancestors. Making fibre art is labour intensive and much care and fine needlework is required to ensure the finished object is both functional and beautiful. Fibre art from Ghunmarn Culture Centre includes dilly bags, floor mats, bush fans, woven creatures found in the landscape, plants such as yams (bush potato), baskets, place mats, and spirit figures such as mermaids and Mukuys. Natural pandanus fibre (Mukarra), is used to make much of the fibre art produced by the artists of Djilpin Arts. Women collect the pandanus by pulling from the top of the pandanus tree, then stripping and drying the leaves before they are dyed with natural bush colour collected from the Beswick surrounds.
Fibre Art is an ancient Aboriginal women’s craft that is still made today using the same techniques as their ancestors. Making fibre art is labour intensive and much care and fine needlework is required to ensure the finished object is both functional and beautiful. Fibre art from Ghunmarn Culture Centre includes dilly bags, floor mats, bush fans, woven creatures found in the landscape, plants such as yams (bush potato), baskets, place mats, and spirit figures such as mermaids and Mukuys. Natural pandanus fibre (Mukarra), is used to make much of the fibre art produced by the artists of Djilpin Arts. Women collect the pandanus by pulling from the top of the pandanus tree, then stripping and drying the leaves before they are dyed with natural bush colour collected from the Beswick surrounds.
Fibre Art is an ancient Aboriginal women’s craft that is still made today using the same techniques as their ancestors. Making fibre art is labour intensive and much care and fine needlework is required to ensure the finished object is both functional and beautiful. Fibre art from Ghunmarn Culture Centre includes dilly bags, floor mats, bush fans, woven creatures found in the landscape, plants such as yams (bush potato), baskets, place mats, and spirit figures such as mermaids and Mukuys. Natural pandanus fibre (Mukarra), is used to make much of the fibre art produced by the artists of Djilpin Arts. Women collect the pandanus by pulling from the top of the pandanus tree, then stripping and drying the leaves before they are dyed with natural bush colour collected from the Beswick surrounds.
Fibre Art is an ancient Aboriginal women’s craft that is still made today using the same techniques as their ancestors. Making fibre art is labour intensive and much care and fine needlework is required to ensure the finished object is both functional and beautiful. Fibre art from Ghunmarn Culture Centre includes dilly bags, floor mats, bush fans, woven creatures found in the landscape, plants such as yams (bush potato), baskets, place mats, and spirit figures such as mermaids and Mukuys. Natural pandanus fibre (Mukarra), is used to make much of the fibre art produced by the artists of Djilpin Arts. Women collect the pandanus by pulling from the top of the pandanus tree, then stripping and drying the leaves before they are dyed with natural bush colour collected from the Beswick surrounds.
Djilpin Arts is a not for profit Aboriginal Corporation that promotes the maintenance, development and transmission of traditional cultural knowledge systems.
For two decades, Djilpin Arts has been working on country with kin and culture, across generations. Our activities are rich in spirit, bringing, healing to the community and linking traditional knowledge with modern enterprise. Our Centre features galleries, museum collection and award winning accommodation for visitors.
Meet local people and artists, learn about traditional life and culture, browse and buy artworks, stay with us and experience seasonal cultural events, tours and immersions.
All artworks are made by local artists living in the community. Artwork reflects the traditional songs and stories that have been passed down through the generations with a contemporary edge: from paintings, prints, fibre art, carvings and dijeridu together to contemporary design prducts and fine woven wire jewellery.