The women of Maningrida and surrounding homelands use a combination of locally found seeds, bone and shells to make a variety of jewellery including necklaces. earrings and bracelets. Many of the artists use complex patterns and designs to make their beautiful creations.
The women of Maningrida and surrounding homelands use a combination of locally found seeds, bone and shells to make a variety of jewellery including necklaces. earrings and bracelets. Many of the artists use complex patterns and designs to make their beautiful creations.
The women of Maningrida and surrounding homelands use a combination of locally found seeds, bone and shells to make a variety of jewellery including necklaces. earrings and bracelets. Many of the artists use complex patterns and designs to make their beautiful creations.
The women of Maningrida and surrounding homelands use a combination of locally found seeds, bone and shells to make a variety of jewellery including necklaces. earrings and bracelets. Many of the artists use complex patterns and designs to make their beautiful creations.
The women of Maningrida and surrounding homelands use a combination of locally found seeds, bone and shells to make a variety of jewellery including necklaces. earrings and bracelets. Many of the artists use complex patterns and designs to make their beautiful creations.
The women of Maningrida and surrounding homelands use a combination of locally found seeds, bone and shells to make a variety of jewellery including necklaces. earrings and bracelets. Many of the artists use complex patterns and designs to make their beautiful creations.
Coil basketry is a well-established fibre art form in the Maningrida region, especially for women from the Kuninjku, Rembarrnga, Ndjebbana and Nakkara language groups.
Artists make coiled baskets of many shapes and sizes, ranging from small round baskets to large oval baby baskets, and made mostly from pandanus fibre that is dyed with natural pigments. Bundles of fibre are formed into coils which are covered and stitched together with strands of fibre threaded onto a needle. Artists combine colours and patterns to obtain intricate new graphic patterns.
These techniques are believed to have been introduced to Arnhem Land by Greta Matthews, a missionary on Goulburn Island in the 1920s. She had probably learnt coil basketry from Aboriginal people in the south-east of Australia, possibly the Murray River people such as the Yorta Yorta or the coastal Ngarrindjeri.
The coiling technique spread quickly from Goulburn Island to people on mainland Arnhem Land.
Coil basketry is a well-established fibre art form in the Maningrida region, especially for women from the Kuninjku, Rembarrnga, Ndjebbana and Nakkara language groups.
Artists make coiled baskets of many shapes and sizes, ranging from small round baskets to large oval baby baskets, and made mostly from pandanus fibre that is dyed with natural pigments. Bundles of fibre are formed into coils which are covered and stitched together with strands of fibre threaded onto a needle. Artists combine colours and patterns to obtain intricate new graphic patterns.
These techniques are believed to have been introduced to Arnhem Land by Greta Matthews, a missionary on Goulburn Island in the 1920s. She had probably learnt coil basketry from Aboriginal people in the south-east of Australia, possibly the Murray River people such as the Yorta Yorta or the coastal Ngarrindjeri.
The coiling technique spread quickly from Goulburn Island to people on mainland Arnhem Land.
This painting depicts a sacred site at ‘Kurrurldul’, an outstation south of Maningrida.
The ‘rarrk’, or abstract crosshatching, on this work represents the design for the crow totem ancestor called ‘Djimarr’. Today this being exists in the form of a rock, which is permanently submerged at the bottom of Kurrurldul Creek. The ‘Djimarr’ rock in the stream at Kurrurldul is said to move around and call out in a soft hooting tone at night. Both the stone itself and the area around it are considered sacred.
The imagery represents the rock mentioned above at the bottom of Kurrurldul creek, which is the final transmutation of the dreaming ancestor ‘Djimarr’. Finally, the pattern used here is also the crow design used in the sacred ‘Mardayin’ ceremony, which is a large regional patri-moiety ceremony now rarely conducted in central and eastern Arnhem Land.
Aboriginal bark paintings have a long cultural tradition, believed to extend back many thousands of years.
In northern Australia, paintings on bark shelters in the Kimberley and Arnhem Land were stylistically similar to rock shelter paintings. The Aboriginal bark paintings were used to convey and illustrate stories which were told to the clan when holed up in the shelter for long periods in the wet season.
Bark paintings with deep cultural and ritual significance still feature in the Aboriginal sacred ceremonies of northern Australia and they, along with some coastal inhabitants are the only indigenous Aborigines still making traditional bark paintings.
The process of making a bark painting begins with choosing a suitable stringybark eucalyptus tree, preferably in the wet season when the sap is rising and the bark is fairly supple and easy to grip. After finding a section of bark that is devoid of knots and termite damage, cuts are made top and bottom and after some encouragement by tugging and prying, a hollow open cylinder of bark is removed. The bark sheet is trimmed and a fire made ready, over which the bark will be cured to drive out any moisture. The bark is then flattened to the ground with feet and then held down with heavy weights to ensure that it doesn’t curl or warp.
The Aboriginal bark painters of Arnhem Land adhere to four basic pigments – red, black, white and yellow. The reds and yellows come from ochres, crushed and powdered rocks. White comes from pipeclay and black generally comes from charcoal. Sometimes natural fixatives are mixed in to bind the pigments and which includes wax, yolk of eggs, resins and the sap of orchid plants. The paint can then be applied to the bark with perhaps a rarrk design by using a wood comb, or with brushes made from human hair or even feathers.