The exhibition catalogue from ‘NGURRUWARRA/ DERNDERNYIN: Stone Fish Traps Of The Wellesley Islands’ is available to download from the link below.
FOREWORD
WORDS: SEAN ULM, JOHN ARMSTRONG AND BERELINE LOOGATHA
Fish traps are central to Kaiadilt, Lardil, Yangkaal and Gangalidda culture, story and very identity.
Fish traps are a key element of material culture shared across the Wellesley Islands region.
This mammoth Ngurruwarra/Derndernyin canvas is a celebration of culture, story and relationship across the seas, lands and skies of the Traditional Owner communities throughout the Wellesley Islands region.
The artwork is a collaboration between ten Kaiadilt, Lardil and Gangalidda artists working together across a massive 20-metre-long by 2-metre-wide canvas. Each artist painted multiple sections of the canvas, with artists negotiating with each other to ensure continuity of story across contiguous elements of the canvas.
Between them, the artists are custodians of intimate knowledge of Country. The most senior Kaiadilt artists of the work, for example, were amongst the last coastal Aboriginal people to be institutionalised in Australia, being forcibly removed from Bentinck Island to a European Mission on Mornington Island in 1948.
One of the first things the Kaiadilt community did when they arrived on Mornington Island was to build their own fish trap near their camp, which is still visible in the intertidal zone in front of the
Kuba Natha Hostel.
This artwork was commissioned by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) to celebrate the relationships between Traditional Owners and researchers working on Country.
The artists dedicate this artwork to the late brilliant Dibirdibi Elsie Gabori, who passed away after the work was completed. She is sorely missed.
Photographer: Cristina Bevilacqua