Mamana Mamanta (Gradual Friendship) - Luna Ryan and Jock Puautjimi

 

A Transparent Process

Margie West AM

The Tiwi have been exceptionally receptive to the introduction of new ideas and media over the years, producing the most diverse artwork of any other Territory group¹. Their body of work includes fabric printing; wheel-throwing, slab-building and pressed pottery; all types of print making; batik and silver jewellery making, alongside the customary arts of bark painting and carving. The Mamana Mamanta exhibition showcases their recent introduction to the technically demanding process of cast glass making. The resulting works were developed as part of a highly successful partnership between Dutch-born artist Luna Ryan and senior Tiwi practitioner Jock Puautjimi through Tiwi Design Aboriginal Corporation at Nguiu, Bathurst Island.

The individual creative journeys of these artists began in very different technical and cultural circumstances, and intersected first in 2003, after a fortuitous meeting between old friends. During her time at the Canberra School of Art, Luna became friends with fellow student Caroline Hunter, who subsequently became the Manager of Tiwi Design between 2002 -2005. After losing touch for over a decade the two met again at a Canberra exhibition in 2002. The seeds for the exhibition project were planted with Luna's invitation to undertake a workshop later on at Tiwi Design. In a strange coincidence, earlier that same year she had created her Lost Moon glass figures, whose schema of a figure holding a crescent moon echoed the Taparra Moon Man sculptures being simultaneously produced by Tiwi potters in the far north. For Luna it was a premonition of what she now regards as her inevitable connection with the Tiwi.

The initial workshop in 2003 included a group of artists with ceramic and carving backgrounds, including Jock Puautjimi, 'Yell' John Patrick Kelantumama, Cyril James Kerinaiua, Mark Virgil Puautjimi, and young Sabo Tipungwuti. They started modestly with open-faced castings of small animal figures originally hand-built in clay. When Luna returned in 2004 she wanted to develop the artists' expertise by working on a larger scale. The two participating artists, Jock Puautjimi and Francis Kerinaiua, progressed to making latex moulds of the clay originals then casting with the lost wax technique. Impressive outcomes included Puautjimi's Creation Story and Jilamara bowls along with two Pukumani burial poles fashioned in clay then cast back at Luna's studio at Australian National Capital Artists (ANCA) complex in Canberra. These works were subsequently exhibited along with Luna's in the Effen Glass group exhibition at the ANCA Gallery in 2005.

The positive reception of these works and Jock's obvious interest in the glass medium convinced Luna they should work towards a major joint exhibition. In 2006 she approached Craft ACT who were successful in obtaining an exhibition development grant on her behalf from the ACT Government. They were enthusiastic about the proposal, viewing it as a rare opportunity to involve Indigenous artists in a project auspiced from the nation's capital. In addition it also promoted Canberra's profile as a national centre for glass making, especially kilnforming. The resulting exhibition of individually-produced and collaborative cast work, is a major development in the use of glass in remote Aboriginal communities. Previously artists at places such as Balgo, Daly River and Warburton have only worked with the more graphic medium of slumped glass; while others have provided designs for one off projects such as Wenten Rubuntja's stained glass windows by Cedar Prest at Alice Springs' Araluen Art Centre, and Wukun Wanambi's ceramic frit and glass panels at the Darwin Waterfront Development, facilitated by Urban Art Projects².

The above examples show that exchange projects like Mamana Mamanta are now relatively commonplace in the contemporary Indigenous art industry. In fact this exhibition belongs to a long lineage of collaborations between art and craft workers and Indigenous artists that began long ago but were only really consolidated back in the 1970s with a major injection of government funds. Together with the Australia Council for the Arts, the Craft Council of Australia was especially influential in funding skills exchanges especially between potters, printmakers, textile artists and Indigenous artists mainly in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia. Other government agencies, missions, and occasionally university departments, were also supportive of new art-based development initiatives. Where the medium connected in some fundamental way with artists, it became part of their repertoire and in some cases developed into flourishing independent enterprises. Some of the earliest, notable successes have been Tiwi Design and Tiwi Pottery on Bathurst Island, where introduced technologies have expanded into sustainable, Indigenous-owned businesses.

Pottery has certain compatibilities with Tiwi artistic practice where sculpting and use of clay/natural pigments for embellishment was fundamental. Eddie Puruntatameri and John Bosco Tipiloura developed these skills at Darwin's Bagot Reserve Ceramic Training Research Unit during the late 1960s under the influential English potter Michael Cardew³. They returned to Nguiu and established Tiwi Pottery initially as a partnership in 1972. When Jock Puautjimi joined the potters in 1979 he also absorbed the English-style of functional ware, distinguished by the application of Tiwi designs in natural-coloured glazes, incision-work or sgraffito. He undertook further training at St George Technical College, Sydney, in 1983 and then at the Darwin Community College in 1984; staging his first solo exhibition at the Government's Inada Holdings Gallery in Darwin at the end of this year.

Since then, he has learnt other contemporary ceramic techniques including multi-coloured glaze application under the tutelage of various resident potters at Tiwi Pottery. His consummate technical skills in hand-building and wheel-throwing ceramics is also continually informed by his fluid engagement with other media, including print making, wood carving and painting. He was able to seamlessly transfer his skills to the making of cast glass, which is based upon an original form sculpted in clay. Technically, this was an important point of connection for both artists.

Sculpting is also one of Luna's strengths. She belongs to a particular genre of kilnformed glass making whose ascendancy over the past two decades has marked a notable shift away from the more labour intensive and expensive method of glass blowing in Australia. This trend has been largely attributed to German-born glass artist Klaus Moje, who founded the Glass Workshop at Canberra School of Art (now known as the Australian National University School of Art) in 1982⁴. Luna, who was one of Moje's students, was immediately attracted to glass casting with the lost wax technique because of the individual control and greater expressive possibility it offered. It also suited her energetic style of carving her originals mostly in clay, then reworking/carving the moulded wax before recasting and firing. Apart from some minimal polishing she eschews any real finessing of the final glass object using the contrasting textures as part of its aesthetic. Her forms often appear hewn directly from glass, conveying a power and physical density that belie their relatively small size and innate fragility.

Along with technique, Luna was also influenced by the Canberra School of Art's interest in the symbolic and expressive potential of glass making as an art form. Her style is distinctive, yet conceptually it has been linked with that of other CSA glass artists, such as Meza Rijsdijk, Itzell Tazzyman, Robyn Campbell, and Miles Grybaitis⁵. Notably, there is a strong narrative that runs throughout her work, which can be both intensely personal as well as allegorical. Her vocabulary of forms includes motifs consistently used since her student days such as the Buddha-like icon Tatwamasi (thou are that), one of the four Mahavakyas sayings of Hinduism referring to the individual's unity with god. Other forms include votive-like vessels often connected, or counterpoised to figures whose placement and creation of negative spaces is integral to the work.

A recurring leitmotiv in her work is the duality of human existence: black/white, life/death, unity/separation, which she often emphasises through the interplay between both luminous/jewel-like, and dense/ impenetrable forms. Through the positioning of these opposites her work continually seeks a resolution through an obvious use of symmetry and balance. As Moje notes however, her work is not all heavy commentary and can also be playful and humorous⁶. Angels, demons, spirits, birds and endearing little teddy bears all inhabit the same quirky universe. To play out her narratives Luna has always used multiple arrangements, and some of her recent, more ambitious shows such as Eccentric Ensemble feature figurescapes of upwards of eighty individual pieces.

Colour is an important symbolic component of both artists' work and to replicate the traditional Tiwi palette of earth-based ochres, Luna cast all the Mamana Mamanta works in black, deep amber and translucent white glass. Several were made in a brilliant azure blue to represent the intensity of the Arafura Sea surrounding the Melville and Bathurst Islands. To conceptualise her first collaboration with Indigenous artists she selected white crystal and either Blackwood crystal or the high quality lead glass from television screens that graduates from an impenetrable black, to a smoky quartz through to a translucent violet according to thickness. She uses this colour opposition to advantage in her metaphoric piece Merge, where the theme of separation/coming together is illustrated with one black and one clear white statuette flanking a grey glass cube that contains the negative of the figurative form.

In Food, cylinders of black and white represent food silos. These are capped by an oppressive grey roof that alludes to the influence of western culture upon the life style of Indigenous people. During Luna's time on the island, she became increasingly concerned about of the Tiwi's' diet and resulting poor nutrition and health. Their reliance on highly processed food on an island of abundant bush food was a contradiction that found expression in the series of seven plate mandalas Visions of a Fragile Eden. The most poignant of this series with their profusion of seed pods, birds, people and fish, is the final work in which all that remains are two pods positioned at five minutes to twelve, and a Tatwamasi figure encircled by a saw blade⁷.

Jock also makes reference to bush food in his Creation Story crystal bowl. While Luna's work is an allegory about natural abundance and environmental destruction, his refers to the defining Tiwi myth about creation. The faces on the lidded bowl represent the main heroes of Tiwi ancestral narrative: Purrukuparli, his brother, Taparra, and his wife Bima (Waiyai), who was the first gatherer and preparer of bush food⁸. Her image is repeated around the vessel form. Through the neglect and subsequent death of her baby due to her adultery with Taparra, she was also responsible for bringing death to a previously immortal world. This story about the transience of human existence is central to Tiwi cosmology and is a familiar motif in the various commercial art forms produced by the artists today.

Inspiration derived from myth and storytelling was one of many synergies that the two artists explored as their project developed; Luna reflecting on her own experience while Jock drew upon the traditional iconography and material culture of the Tiwi ceremony. His major installation of poles, tutini pukumani represents the dense ironwood carvings traditionally erected around a gravesite at the conclusion of the final burial ceremony iloti, to signal the effective departure of the deceased's spirit. During the pole's creation, the inanimate wood is symbolically transformed through a series of ritual stages abbreviated as: kuritua, cutting down and shaping the wood, jikwani 'cooking' the wood black, and jilamara applying the ochre designs. The final pole, with its decorated 'skin', symbolises the deceased and is said to contain the person's imunga or animating breath⁹.

Poles can also symbolise ancestral beings related to the Purrukuparli myth. In Puautjimi's assembly, the larger bird pole represents Bima, who after the baby's death, transformed into a curlew with its mournful, human like cry. The phallic shaped poles are actually representations of the bulbed club murrukuwunga, used by Taparra in his fight with Purrukuparli who was devastated by the death of his son as a result of his wife's adultery. The ceremonial barbed spears arawinkiri, that embellish two of his glass poles, are also associated with the creation period and these were customarily held during the Pukumani ritual. According to the artist, the other bird poles represent magpie geese and the horn topped ones, represent the buffalo. This feral animal, introduced to the islands with the establishment of Fort Dundas Melville Island in 1824, really symbolises the Tiwi's first significant colonial encounter and is often celebrated in dance and song as well as art. Its crescent horn shapes are ambiguous and can also refer to Taparra, who transformed into the moon after his fight with Purrukuparli. The regular waxing and waning of the moon is a heavenly reminder to the Tiwi today of the regenerative cycles of life and death.

The eloquent translation of these solid timber forms into the fragile medium of glass attests to the successful nature of the artists' collaboration, who developed ideas collaboratively then worked separately in the areas they knew best. Jock was originally taught how to carve tutini by his grandfather Gabriel Tungatalum and from around 2000 he has also made some in ceramic, one of which was highly commended in the 2007 Shepparton Art Gallery Indigenous Ceramic Art Award. The solution for making large ceramic poles was tackled by Tiwi Pottery first in 1985 when they were commissioned by the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory to commemorate the Tiwi's capture of the first Japanese on Australia soil. This innovative ceramic pole stands today at the Nguiu airport¹⁰. Using this model, Jock wheel-turned the different vessel-like sections that make up the body of the pole consisting of ball shaped segments representing the burial ground and cylindrical segments symbolising western-stye coffins¹¹. Each section was then dried, incised with designs and fired before being sent down to Luna for moulding and casting in glass according to Jock's colour specifications. The pole sections were made with a central hollow that allowed Luna to then thread each glass piece like beads onto a central support rod.

Using her mastery and knowledge of light and shade, Luna cast several poles in black lead glass of such density they almost look painted. The clear and opaque crystal poles with their visible central axis were a revelation to Jock when he saw them assembled for the first time,

I made a ceremony pole so you could see through it, and see the meaning of the pole; It's like looking inside the ceremony. This is the grave where you put the dead body and you can see through there and see there is a person inside there¹².

His statement emphasises the anthropomorphic quality of the poles, whose outer skin and inner bones are a metaphor for the physical cycle of life and decay. This play between visibility and invisibility is integral to a lot of Indigenous art and references inside (restricted) and outside (public) knowledge about the natural spiritual world. X-ray paintings of ordinary animals operate in the same way in western Arnhem Land. Luna also plays with the ambiguous aspects of exterior and concealed spaces with figures often contained inside another or within abstract forms, as in Merge. As she says "It is as if I/we can let the image of a certain idea go, to live its own life, in a different form, in absent/negative space".¹³

It's interesting to note such points of connection between these two artists, despite their different cultural and personal perspectives. Their common interest in storytelling and mythmaking, along with their respective technical expertise in clay modelling, created a solid basis for their collaboration and ensured the integrity of the works they produced. The exhibition's Tiwi title which means 'gradual friendship', contains the other reasons for their successful exchange: mutual trust and the incremental development and exchange of skills, which really reaffirmed rather than radically changed each other's practice.

It has been said that Luna's works transcends the mundane through her ritualistic forms and elements¹⁴. For Jock, his work is a manifestation and continual reinterpretation of the profound cosmological beliefs that articulate his world. Despite the gradual demise of ritual activity on the island these fundamental precepts are kept alive in the contemporary arena of Tiwi art making. So, irrespective of the media, whether it is in clay, wood, canvas or glass, for Jock Puautjimi, 'the meaning is the same'¹⁵. Showing this meaning to the outside world through ceremonial works in glass has opened up a range of new possibilities for Jock Puautjimi, who like Luna Ryan, is now dreaming of their next project together.

Margie West AM

Margie West has a post-graduate degree in anthropology from the Australian National University and has extensive curatorial experience spanning nearly forty years.

She was Curator of Aboriginal Art & Material Culture between 1978-2005 at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT), where she currently holds the honorary position of Emeritus Curator. She has curated numerous semi-permanent and touring exhibitions on Aboriginal art and was the founder of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. She has also published extensively on Aboriginal Art, and most recently was the co-editor with Hetti Perkins of One Sun One Moon and editor of Yalangbara: Art of the Djang'kawu.

Footnotes

1. The Tiwi's receptiveness to new ideas has been linked to their traditional valuation of individual creativity. The anthropologist Jane Goodale undertook a study on the importance of Tiwi creativity and innovation in the ritual domain, which was traditionally sanctioned by the ancestor Purrukuparli
2. Felicity Green pers.com.
3. see M West 2002, for the background on the ceramics training unit
4. see Noris Ioannou, 1995, pp33-37
5. Ibid, p88
6. Klaus Moje Opening Speech for Luna Ryan's Eccentric Ensemble exhibition, 28 May 2004
7. This also refers to the clearing of 26,000 hectares of old growth forest on Melville Island to plant an exotic acacia for wood chipping which is the biggest single land-clearing operation in northern Australia.
8. Jock Puautjimi, Interview with Margie West, Nguiu, 23 September 2008
9. see Jennifer Hoff, 1988, p 5
10. Stephen Anderson, Tiwi Pottery Quarterly Report, January-March, 1985
11. Jock Puautjimi Interview, op.cit
12. Ibid
13. Luna Ryan pers.com.
14. Noris Ioannou, op.cit, p 109
15. Jock Puautjimi, Indigenous Ceramic Art Award, catalogue, Shepparton Art Gallery, 2007, p 16

Images

1. Mamana Mamanta (Gradual Friendship) installation at Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre, 2007
2. Luna Ryan, Vision of a Fragile Eden (detail), 2007
3. Jock Puautjimi (cast with Luna Ryan), Pukumani Poles (detail), 2006/7
4. Jock Puautjimi (cast with Luna Ryan), Pukumani Pole (detail), 2006/7
5. Jock Puautjimi (cast with Luna Ryan), Pukumani Poles (detail), 2006/7

All photographs: Creative Image Photography

The above essay and images are from the 24 page catalogue Mamana Mamanta (Gradual Friendship) which can be purchased at the tour venues or ordered from Craft ACT for $10 (inc. GST and Postage)

Contents:

• Gradual friendship - Barbara McConchie
• A transparent process - Margie West

Phone: (02) 6262 9333 or email craftact [at] craftact.org.au

This exhibition is presented by Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre, with support by Visions Australia, an Australian Government program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material across Australia.