Piper Stewart
Murrumbidgee Regional High School
WOVEN TOGETHER, MY CULTURE, OUR HISTORY
Textile and Fibre
Raffia, Hemp cord, Clay
While on a family holiday to the Northern Territory, exploring and connecting to my Aboriginal culture, I participated in traditional basket weaving workshops. This link to my culture inspired my body of work. I was also motivated by learning that British museums hold many valuable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage artefacts, including some from my family. These artefacts were “Gifted, sold, exchanged and bartered by Indigenous people, and accepted, bought, collected and taken by travellers, colonists, explorers, missionaries, officials and others”. The incorporation of these powerful words, shadowed over my weaving, demonstrates how Aboriginal culture has been mistreated and misinterpreted since colonisation.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: Ngumpie Weavers, Durrmu Arts Aboriginal Corporation.
Marker's Commentary
Woven Together, My Culture, Our History is a personal and passionate testament to reclaiming long held cultural traditions of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples combined with a revision of truth telling in Australia’s historical narrative. The body of work coherently communicates historical complexities of colonisation whilst simultaneously celebrating culture and community. It is a meaningful engagement with, and recognition of, enduring traditional practices.
Care and precision become paramount as woven threads and fibres in signature earthly hues honour traditional customs, practices and pastimes. Family lineage is paralleled within the complex weaving of fibres, the construction of forms akin to meshing of multi-generational bloodlines and communities who have held knowledge within these forms. The complex range of pieces demonstrate not only a mastery of skill but a palpable shared culture. The audience is reminded of the timeless nature and function of these woven forms whilst simultaneously being jolted into remembering a dark past where the objects were devoid of life through their photographic documentation and dormant presentation as prized artefacts in a gallery context.