This story was produced on the lands of the Kunibídji, Burarra and Gadigal peoples. We pay our respects to their elders, storytellers and artists — past and present.
The centrepiece of the NGV Triennial took 13 women, two years and more than 35,000 threads to make. This is the story of Australia’s largest woven sculpture.
In the thick mid-afternoon heat of Maningrida, Arnhem Land, three Burarra women sit under a eucalyptus tree stripping pandanus leaves.
The trio are master weavers with more than 70 years of practice between them.
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains names of people who have died.
This is Doreen Jinggarrabarra.
She is a proud Burarra woman from Jinawunya Country near Gupanga (the Blyth River), about 50 kilometres south-east of Maningrida.
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Beside her is Freda Wayartja Ali, affectionately known as “Freda 1”.
She grew up on Yilan Country, on the other side of the river from Doreen.
This is her younger sister, Freda Ali, who is also from Yilan.
Aka “Freda 2”.
The women have been out all morning collecting gun-menama.
That’s the Burarra word for the prickly, lime-green leaves of the Pandanus spiralis plant.
Commonly known as a “screw pine”, the Pandanus spiralis is native to coastal Arnhem Land and found in bushland areas around Maningrida, where the women live and work.
On this sweltering mid-September afternoon, they are preparing the leaves for dyeing.
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First, they strip them in half and then halve them again.
They peel each strip lengthways, as if pulling the plastic off an adhesive, and de-prickle the edges using a fingernail as a blade.
The precision is mesmerising.
The women are on a mission to finish an epic undertaking: a 100-metre-long woven fish fence, commissioned for the NGV Triennial.
Titled Mun-dirra, it is the largest fish fence of its kind in the world, and Australia’s largest-ever woven sculpture.
More than 35,000 threads from an estimated 4,400 pandanus leaves have been used to make Mun-dirra – all hand-harvested, dyed and woven by the women.
If it were laid out as a single continuous thread, it would run to 56 kilometres.
That’s roughly the distance between Sydney and Penrith.
Doreen, Freda 1 and Freda 2 are among a group of 13 artists from Maningrida Arts Centre who have collaborated over two years to make the artwork, which is traditional to Burarra culture.
The women split the weaving into 10 sections — each 10 metres long and 2 metres wide — and sent them one by one to Melbourne, where they have been on display at the NGV since early December.
For many of the women, it’s the first time their work has been shown in a major gallery.
The weavers of Manayingkarírra
As the women sit stripping pandanus leaves, the shadow of a damalkurra — a big eagle — circles the red earth beside them.
It soars over the corrugated roof of Maningrida Arts Centre, where the women work.
They spend a lot of time here, although their homelands are several hours away by car.
Maningrida is a remote coastal community in north-west Arnhem Land.
It’s about an hour and a half away from Darwin by plane and home to about 3,000 people.
The traditional owners are the Kunibídji people, although today there are more than 100 clan groups across Maningrida and its 32 surrounding homelands.
Its name has been anglicised from the traditional Kunibídji word “Manayingkarírra“, which comes from the phrase “Mane djang karirra”.
It means “the place where the Dreaming changed shape”.
There are 10 primary languages and numerous dialects spoken across Maningrida, making it one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world.
Doreen, Freda 1 and Freda 2 all speak dialects of Burarra, as do the other 10 fibre artists who worked on Mun-dirra.
In Burarra, mun-dirra means “fish fence”.
Mun-dirra were traditionally made by Burarra men using coastal sedge grass called gurdagarra and were designed to fence in schools of fish in ocean shallows or riverbeds.
They were used in conjunction with conical traps, called an-gujechiya, which are woven with mirlarl — a hardy jungle vine — and burdaga (the sinewy bark we mentioned earlier).
Doreen explains: “In the old days, they didn’t have any casting nets, [so] they made a fish trap and a long fence net, [put] them side to side, and put the fish trap in the middle. Then the fish came and went in the fish trap.”
Doreen remembers seeing the traps in riverbeds around Maningrida when she was young.
“The older ladies and the older men [would] usually go down, say about seven or eight o’clock, to go and check the trap. Maybe seven fish can go in, crabs and catfish,” she recalls.
Woven fish traps have been used by Aboriginal people for millennia, starting somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Mun-dirra and an-gujechiya are traditional to Burarra culture.
Kunibídji people use them too but call them kunkarlewabe (fish fence) and mandjabu (fish trap).
Freda 1 says the community stopped using traditional traps in the 80s.
Instead, they use fishing lines and casting nets for fishing, and the woven traps are made as works of art.
Burarra women are now considered the knowledge holders.
Harvesting from the bush
Before they can start weaving, the women must first head out bush to collect the raw materials.
Along with pandanus, they need wood to make a bark rope and coloured roots to dye the leaves.
For the bark rope, the women collect kurrajong or banyan tree branches.
Doreen explains:
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When crushed, the kurrajong branches expose a sinewy inner bark called burdaga, which the women roll back and forth on their legs to fashion into rope.
This is used for the outer netting of the mun-dirra, which pandanus leaves are then woven between.
Along with the kurrajong, the pandanus leaves are harvested by hand.
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The youngest part of the plant, its centre, is what they want. (The outer skirt of leaves is dry and brown — no good for harvesting.)
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The women use a hook stick — made from a fallen forked tree branch — to tug the pandanus free and then bundle them up in makeshift carriers peeled from nearby paperbark trees.
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Lastly, they need to collect plant roots. On this particular expedition, the women work in prickling 40-degree heat using shovels and their bare hands.
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They’ll use the roots to dye their freshly harvested pandanus leaves.
Back at the arts centre, the women prepare the dye bath.
To draw the pigment from the roots they’ve collected, they crush the roots with a stone and put them in a billy can of water over a fire.
Once boiling, they add the pandanus strips to the dye bath and use salt and wood ash as mordants.
The yellow root produces a golden yellow when boiled for a few minutes, and a tangerine orange when boiled for 20 or more.
The women will sometimes soak the leaves overnight or use wood ash to deepen the root colour, explains Freda 1.
For the final section of Mun-dirra, they’re making batches of red, yellow and brown pandanus.
“Yellow is Yirrchinga and brown is Duwa,” says Doreen, stirring the billy can.
These are the two “moieties” that govern kinship and knowledge systems in Maningrida.
Everything in the world is split into Jowunga and Yirrchinga: every tree, every bird, every colour.
Jowunga and Yirrchinga are the Burarra words — in the Kuninjku language, they are Duwa and Yirridjdja respectively. (Doreen uses the terms interchangeably.)
In Maningrida, moieties are passed on patrilineally by skin name.
They determine social relationships and marriages.
For example, Doreen’s skin name is Gamanyjan, which is Jowunga (or Duwa) and Freda 1 is Gochan, which is Yirrchinga (or Yirridjdja).
“Doreen is this side of the river and we are from the other side, but we are family,” says Freda 1.
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Now in their 60s, Doreen and Freda 1 have known each other since their early 20s and have been weaving together for more than three decades.
They seem to work in sync, anticipating each other’s needs. It’s endearing to watch.
When the dye bath is complete, the women pull the vividly coloured strips from the billy can.
They will use these for the final section of Mun-dirra.
From mother to daughter
Doreen first learned weaving from her mother when she was a teenager.
“I sat next to her and I watched my mum when she [would] strip pandanus and dye the colour and start weaving. It made me [feel] good to learn more about the culture,” Doreen says.
She made her first mat when she was 20 years old.
“At first, I got it tangled up, but then I tried again and again. I was thinking really hard [about] how my mum did weaving … and I just got it straight away,” she says.
After her mother passed away in 2002, Doreen started working with the arts centre and selling her artworks.
Now aged 62, she is one of the leading fibre artists in Maningrida, specialising in burlurpurr (dilly bags) and bamagora (conical mats).
“Weaving makes me feel good … I sit [and weave] at home. I walk out with the hook sticks and collect the pandanus just near the beach.
“I talk to Freda or she comes up and tells me, ‘Let’s go and collect the dye,’ so we go and collect the dyes — the brown colour, yellow, ash, the berries and leaves,” she says.
“I love weaving. We are happy today in this world and we like to teach our children to learn more about culture.”
Working on Mun-dirra for the Triennial has been particularly special for Doreen because it’s in her songline, along with the an-gujechiya — the fish trap — which is her totem.
Other artists in the community must ask Doreen for permission if they want to weave or depict an an-gujechiya.
Freda 1 learnt how to make an-gujechiya and mun-dirra from Doreen, who gave her cultural permission several years ago.
But, like Doreen, Freda first learned to weave by watching her mum.
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Freda’s Country is Yilan, which is about 40 kilometres due east of Maningrida, or 127 kilometres by car.
The 64-year-old first started working with the arts centre in 2015, but has been producing fibre art since the mid-90s.
In 2022, she won a NATSIAA Award — Australia’s biggest Indigenous art prize — for a joint work with fellow artist Bonnie Burangarra.
Along with Doreen, Freda is among the most senior weavers in Maningrida.
It’s a point of pride: The Top End community is known for its rich history of making art, including bark painting, sculpture, weaving, song and dance.
The renowned 20th-century Kunwinjku bark painter Yirawala came from Maningrida.
He was known as the “Picasso of Arnhem Land” and, in 1976, became the first living Aboriginal artist to have work collected by a major gallery.
But beyond accolades, the community’s relationship with art is about continuing culture and songlines.
It’s a responsibility that Doreen is particularly conscious of.
“Today I’m a bit worried about the young girls. [I want them] to learn more culture and to learn about our weaving,” she says.
Weaving for the next generation
When ABC Arts visits Maningrida in September, Doreen is living there, away from her home country Jinawunya.
Although she finished her section of Mun-dirra several months earlier — “first,” she adds proudly — she has remained in town for Sorry Business.
Her sister passed away in 2023.
“When we have first rain then I have to go back,” she says.
Doreen can’t speak her sister’s name, but when she says she was also a weaver a big smile spreads across her face.
Finishing Mun-dirra has helped Doreen grieve and make peace with her sister’s death.
“I’m OK now. I feel good because when I made that fence net, I told my sister ‘Come’, and we did the weaving together.
“I told her that it’s OK, that I’ll be looking after our kids [when she goes].”
Freda, who is listening, adds gently: “She was so good at weaving.”
Doreen is now looking after her sister’s children.
She also has four kids of her own and is teaching the girls to weave.
“I’m showing my two girls that they can weave for their future and they can learn more about weaving and their culture,” she says.
“It’s really hard for those kids when they grow [up] but we have to sit and show them, ‘See how we start and how we weave?’
“I’m trying my best to get young girls, maybe 20 or 30 … so we can hand it over to them and they can start telling the stories about the weaving, carving [and] paintings.”
The learning has to happen on country, Doreen says.
“Otherwise, they don’t know. They just want to play with [their] phones, but this TikTok is not a part of our culture.
“That dancing …” she says, rolling her eyes.
“But we dance in our way, in our culture.”
Both Doreen and Freda 1 are leaders in the community, helping to pass on traditional knowledge and practices to the younger folk.
It’s important for balanda (non-Indigenous people) to understand the significance of Burarra culture too, says Freda 1.
“The fish trap is very special for Aboriginal people, like Doreen’s family, because it’s on the songline,” she says.
Bringing Burarra culture to the city
The women are also keen to share their culture and artistry outside of Maningrida.
Considering the amount of labour and care that goes into their fibre artworks, it’s an understandable desire.
But it’s not always easy to share work off country.
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Like most communities in Arnhem Land, Maningrida is managed by the Northern Land Council, which consults with traditional owners about land use and care, so visitors need a permit to travel there.
The arts centre does allow some visitor groups to its gallery space, but most of the work is exhibited in group shows, while sales are largely limited to online.
When the NGV commissioned Mun-dirra for the triennial, it presented a rare opportunity for the women to have their work seen off country and by a much larger audience.
For reference: The first triennial in 2017 saw 1.23 million visitors through the NGV’s doors.
In November, the final length of Mun-dirra was flown to the gallery, with less than a month to spare before the opening.
Finishing the work has been a massive undertaking for the women.
Doreen’s section alone took 424 days to complete (she counted).
“It took us a long time. We [would] often lie down here at the arts centre and sleep with the weaving and … then we go out on a bush trip and collect more pandanus and more colour.
“You should take a photo of me asleep,” she says with a wry laugh.
While they’re tired, the women are enormously proud of their efforts.
The final work is monumental.
At 100 metres in length, Mun-dirra is one of the biggest works in the NGV Triennial, which features more than 75 works in total, including 25 new commissions.
It’s on display alongside work from contemporary Australian artists including Betty Muffler and Heather B Swann, and internationally renowned artists including Yoko Ono, David Shrigley and Tracey Emin.
The NGV’s senior curator of Australian and First Nations art, Myles Russell-Cook, described it as an “infinite woven symphony”.
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On the ground floor of the NGV, each piece of Mun-dirra has been hung as if floating in water.
Visitors can move between the giant folds of woven pandanus.
Just like fish in the saltwater riverbeds of Maningrida.
Mun-dirra is on display as part of the NGV Triennial until April 7 at the National Gallery of Victoria.
The reporters received funding from the NGV to travel to Maningrida.
Credits
Reporting and digital production: Anna Freeland
Video and photography: Richard Mockler
Additional photos: Renae Saxby for NGV
Mun-dirra artists: Doreen Jinggarrabarra, Freda Ali Wayartja, Freda Ali, Indra Prudence, Zoe Prudence, Gabriella Garrimara, Maureen Ali, Jennifer Prudence, Anthea Stewart, Bonnie Burarngarra, Lorna Jingubarrangunyja, Michelle Baker, and Cecille Baker.
With thanks to Be Keillor.
