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Pukumani Pole (detail)
 

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

Reviews

Tiwi Jock and Dutch Luna Share Skills

Koori Mail 2007, Wednesday 5 December, p. 53

Two artists - one black and the other white, one male and the other female, one 'traditional' and the other 'contemporary' - have used their dawning friendship to create a new exhibition in the national capital.

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A successful meeting of tradition and technology

Sharon Peoples, Canberra Times 2007, Wednesday 5 December, p. 8

This collaborative exhibition has its origins in a series of glass workshops run on Bathurst Island.

The two artists, Canberra artists Luna Ryan and Tiwi Islander Jock Puautjimi, met here. The initial piece stemming from that workshop is the centre piece, Pukumani Poles (Tiwi burial poles). Although this specific work has been exhibited briefly before in Canberra, with this exhibition it is placed within its own intellectual context.

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Mamana Mamanta (Gradual Friendship)

Jas Hugonnet, 2007, Curator / Exhibition Manager, Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre

A recent trip to the Northern Territory highlighted the fact for me that the English language for most indigenous people is their third or fourth language and when you consider this, it is quite amazing that a Dutch national now living in Australia has developed a project with a prominent Tiwi Island artist and forged a gradual friendship which translates into the title of this exhibition, Mamana Mamanta.

See also: January 2007 exhibition at Craft ACT

Tiwi Glass: An International Collaboration

Ann McMahon, 2006, Craft Culture

In October 2003, Dutch born artist Luna Ryan made her first trip to Nguiu on Bathurst, one of the Tiwi Islands. Informed by her European upbringing, she took with her a heart and mind open to linguistic and cultural difference, along with a few initial contacts and, she says, 'about 30 kilos of glass in my suitcase.'

See also: Review at Craft Culture

 

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