Selling Yarns

Australian Indigenous textiles and good business in the 21st century

 

Papers

"Gunga Dhawu" (Pandanas Story)

Session: Makers Forum 1:00 - 4:00 pm, Saturday, 12 August 2006

Louise Partos

Manager, Bula'bula Arts Aboriginal Corporation

Abstract

It is an arduous and time consuming process to create the stunning fibre works for which artists from Bula'bula Arts are renowned. This is rarely understood. Therefore, in 2005, Bula'bula Arts Aboriginal Corporation decided that a priority for the organisation was the promotion of its predominantly female fibre artists. It was decided that the art centre would search for ways to show audiences the time-consuming process of work which is required to make a single work as well as promote fibre art from Ramingining. The resultant promotional DVD Gunga Dhawu (Pandanus Story) was a collaborative project by Bula'bula Arts Aboriginal Corporation and ANKAAA.

This project consisted of two parts. Firstly, it was intended to deliver training to interested members of Bula'bula Arts in the use of a video camera. The outcome of the training was the ability of members to shoot good usable footage on location. The second part of the project was to document the process of fibre production from the collection of pandanus, to the digging up of the root vegetable dyes, to the boiling and dying and, of course, the final process of coiling or twining. This would be documented in a promotional DVD for Bula'bula Arts.

Can such projects be successful for both a local audience as well as achieve our aims of the promotion of artists and their labours? What else is required? In 2006, Bula'bula Arts produced a new fibre brochure, the aim of which was also to amaze and delight audiences with the beauty of the fibre products and skill of the artists from this region.

Have these promotional tools been successful?

See also: Louise Partos's biography