Shirley Macnamara is a fibre artist with a significant career dating from the mid 1990s. In the last 10 years the Gallery has acquired numerous weavings and objects made from a broad range of materials, including Macnamara’s Wingreeguu 2012, commissioned for APT7, a woven sculptural installation based on traditional Indjilandji / Dhidhanu / Alyawarre spinifex shelters.

On 10 December 2012, during the opening weekend of APT7, Shirley Macnamara spoke to a small group eager to hear about her life and work and shared aspects of her cultural and artistic life. Diane Moon reports.

Shirley Macnamara: I haven’t been a part of an exhibition before that’s as important as this and it’s quite something, new and different. I’ve had a long association with Diane Moon and she’s visited me quite often. We’ve even had flat tyres in the spinifex patch together. She commissioned a piece for the Campbelltown Regional Gallery in 1997, probably one of the largest I’ve done. It was wonderful to have this commission as that had never really happened before and I got enough money to buy a horse. I’d wanted to buy a horse for a while and it all just tied in. I live on a cattle station which I run with my son and he and his family live there as well. A lot of time’s taken up working, but I make time for my art work.

I was born in Mt Isa but my traditional country is Indjilandji / Dhidhanu, which is in the Camooweal region in far western Queensland, 13 kilometres east of the Northern Territory border. My father is an Alyawarre man and we’ve had a wonderful connection to his people at Lake Nash, across the Northern Territory border. So, I’m a bush person and I’m very proud of that.

I used to paint. I started off painting, though I have never had any real art training. There was a lady that painted, and I went to a few classes, but I work in isolation basically.

I started looking for something to use from the land itself; I needed to use a natural fibre. There was no one in my family working in any of those materials and so I did search for quite a number of years and discovered that spinifex is very resilient. It lives and survives in a very harsh environment and you can’t kill it. We’ve just had bushfires at home and nearly all the spinifex is burnt - our property is 95 per cent burnt out - and all I can see at home is burnt hills. The majority of spinifex is gone, but it will grow back, that’s just what it does.

So I discovered the spinifex and thought, ‘Well, this is what I’m going to use’ and spent a couple of years experimenting with it to see whether it was going to last and it has done. And I have. I met Diane along the way and we’ve had a really good association and I have been part of a number of exhibitions. My work changed from two-dimensional to three-dimensional and initially, when I started out working in spinifex, I felt there were probably some things made from spinifex that were used traditionally but I hadn’t seen them, and so I chose to construct things of my own shape and size. I did not want to do anything that was or had been made before. I wanted to work entirely in a contemporary style. I called my first set of vessels Guutu, because that means a container, or vessel, in my traditional language. But in this contemporary style none of my works are meant to be functional. They’re basically representative of the very harsh, dark, dry region that I live and work in.

Diane Moon: Could you tell me about the colour of spinifex and how seasonal changes affect it?

SM: Well, spinifex in our country has always been considered as quite a rubbish material by the grazing industry, because the grass will grow in between the spinifex. Though, when there’s nothing else for them to eat, the cattle can actually survive on it and that’s basically what’s just happened at home, before it was all burnt. So we muster and do our cattle work in the cooler months of the year. We were mustering and I was racing around chasing cattle on a horse and spotted this spinifex that had been turned over by a grader and here were all these beautiful colours. I’d been searching for the right material and thought that I might use spinifex, and then I saw this beautiful colour underneath.

There are actually three layers of colour on each strand. I pick each strand individually and clean the outer layer off and there’s this beautiful colour underneath it. Quite often I’ve had people ask me if I colour the strands in some way. The colours vary, as Diane mentioned; the variations are seasonal, I’ve found. In winter time they are a beautiful golden-yellow. At CIAF in Cairns last year I had one red and one yellow piece. One summertime and one wintertime, showing this variation. The colours are softer at first and then they gradually darken, sometimes into an orangey colour and even into a darker red. I think the heat may have something to do with that as well. But I didn’t even know that before I started using the grass (spinifex). I use the little individual runners that connect the spinifex clumps, which are quite strong, and I see them as representing how we manage and survive in the environment

DM: Wingreeguu is quite a departure from your earlier vessels. Could you tell us how it evolved?

SM: Well the turpentine bush is another one of those things that grow out there. They grow very, very thickly and make it difficult to chase cattle as they can hide under it when you’re on a horse galloping through the turpentine. I’ve quite often seen them tipped over as this one was and for the last couple of years I’ve enjoyed the thought that I could do something with the structural shape of it, because it did remind me of traditional shelters from many years ago made by Aboriginal people that I had seen. Though the coverings had blown off them, the basic shape was there. I liked the shape and also the concept of using turpentine and spinifex together to represent the shelter. It’s the biggest piece I’ve done, and it took a bit of time, but it was very interesting to do. The idea has basically come from the plant itself, quite often tipped over by whirly winds out in the bush and you think you could come along and throw something over the top of that and there’s a place to stay if you needed it

DM: Could you explain your approach in covering the outer surface of Wingreeguu with circles?

SM: I wasn’t too sure how I was going to use the strands, but I’ve often used rings in my work and with the little strands running down, so I thought this would be the best way for me to do it? Those little rings and strings have always been representative of tracks or storylines and the connecting link between us, as well as a link to where we are and who we are and where we come from. Quite a strong belief in my life is the idea that though we go around and around in circles, you always go back to where you came from, to the place where you expect to live and die.

DM: Could you say something about the yellow ochre because I know that’s very important to you?

SM: Well I have a strong connecting link with the yellow ochre and it is very special. I’ve used it in my other works as well. The yellow ochre comes from a very special place and has a very special meaning. It needs to be cared for and is also a nurturing essence that belongs to us and l believe it carries the essence of where we belong.

DM: And not surprisingly, in all these years, nobody else has taken up weaving with spinifex, have they?

SM: In two and a half weeks my hands have recovered. I wear one glove that becomes black from the spinifex wax, a beautiful resin that comes out of the spinifex used traditionally as an adhesive for gluing stone tools onto their shafts. It goes black when you’re picking spinifex and sticks to your hands. You heat it up to soften and mould it to use. I have a safety pin on my shirt which I use every now and then to dig a piece of spinifex out. It has some really good things about it as well, though.

DM: You could call it a love-hate relationship with spinifex!

SM: In finishing off, it’s about bringing a part of that bit of bush where both those plants grow to the Gallery. It’s also about making use of what we have in our area and looking after our environment (ours is quite a harsh one). And to be able to be creative, making something from what’s there and sharing that with everyone else.