Margaret Rarru Garrawurra and Helen Ganalmirriwuy Garrawurra’s timeless forms — larrakitj (wooden poles memorialising a death) and sheets of prepared bark — carry images of the sacred. With their stark, minimalist designs in chalky pigment, the painted poles connect aesthetically with the sisters’ unique black sculptural baskets. Born in farthest northern Arnhem Land, they were taught important Liyagawumirr clan designs by their father, and to understand the deep, poetic meanings of ancient creation narratives. When yothu (young), they were also instructed in the cultural meanings of woven fibre objects and a range of weaving techniques.

Following the 2006 death of their brother Mickey Durrng, the sisters inherited the right to paint Liyagawumirr sacred geometry. As Durrng once stated, ‘These designs are the power of the land. The sun, the water, creation, for everything’.¹ The women of his family understood the importance of their role, and Ruth Nalmakarra (their father’s sister) led their introduction to the revival and reinterpretation of their cultural heritage, which they approached with great creativity.

Now, Rarru and Ganalmirriwuy paint poles and barks in distinctive red (miku), white (watharr) and yellow (buthjalak) pigments, in variations of Liyagawumirr designs. Stripes reference body painting for ngarra, which is both a funeral ceremony and a celebration of regeneration and renewal. Other designs trace the tracks of buwata (bush turkey), or map, using circles and lines, freshwater springs made by the ancestral Djan’kawu sisters with their digging sticks on their creation journey across Arnhem Land.

Garrawurra women are central to ceremonial songs and dances that retell the Djan’kawu sisters’ story of when they wore beautiful and deeply significant objects, and spilled the Dhuwa moiety clans, languages, names and ceremonies from their woven baskets and mats throughout the land. The Garrawurra women honour this heritage in their art through replicating the Djan’kawu regalia, and imbue their work, both sacred and secular, with spirit and intensity. The contemporary aesthetic of Rarru and Ganalmirriwuy’s painted images resonates with their basketry, for which they continually invent new forms and techniques beyond the traditional.² The introduction of the coil-weaving stitch, in particular, has extended their range into larger, more solid forms and, with the discovery of a rare black dye (achieved in a secret process), they have developed their unique bathi mul (black baskets). Pandanus leaf strands, saturated with rich colour, are tightly woven into metallic-looking surfaces, where fields of subtly graded shades of black reveal a gleam of charcoal. In contrast, the twined strands in conical mindirr create a matt, textured surface, highlighted with slight irregularities due to changes in the spacing and tension of the weave.

Raw materials, which themselves have cultural meanings, are harvested locally on Yurrwi (Milingimbi), the surrounding islands and the nearby mainland. The women travel to favourite bush or saltwater sites in the appropriate season, casting their experienced eye over leaves, roots, grasses, bark and hollowed out trees, and gather what they need. A truck- or boatload is processed while fresh — pandanus and bark fibres are prepared for weaving and dyeing, wooden surfaces trimmed and smoothed, and rock pigments laboriously ground and crushed for paint. Living remotely in their Arnhem Land island home, Margaret Rarru and Helen Ganalmirriwuy work tirelessly and professionally at their practice, and have established a reputation as two of the finest and most innovative textile artists in Australia.

Endnotes

1. Mickey Durrng, quoted in Brenda Westley and Steve Westley, ‘Mickey Durrng: Artist of East Arnhem Land’, Aboriginal Art Online, viewed May 2018.
2. The artists' works were a commission for APT9.