This work was produced for the 2001 Craft Queensland exhibition 'Double Take: Recycling in Contemporary Craft'. The exhibition was an inquiry into the culture of recycling materials by contemporary Australian artists.

Guutu 14 ('Guutu' is the traditional word for vessels or containers in Shirley Macnamara's language), reflects the Mt Guide landscape, in which the prickly forms of 'porcupine grass' (spinifex) glisten in the low western sunlight. Each year during the dry period between August and September, Macnamara gathers individual spinifex 'runner' roots, which reveal shades of gold and red after they are stripped of their outer shell. Strand by strand Macnamara moulds, shapes, twists and tucks the spinifex into graceful forms. Their colours and shapes remind her of times and places of personal significance. This woven vessel incorporates the feathers of a dead emu, found at the roadside near Shirley Macnamara's property at Mt Guide Station, Mt Isa. The use of emu feathers and the ovoid shape of the vessel are considered to be significant developments in Macnamara's practice. To date, the artist is known to have made only two of these exceptionally beautiful vessels using emu feathers, the other being in a private collection.

Adapted by Trish Johnson, Curatorial Assistant, Indigenous Australian Art, December 2001 from notes by Diane Moon supplied to the Queensland Art Gallery, 2000.