Lorraine Connelly-Northey
‘Water: Held’
Lorraine Connelly-Northey reinvents narrbong: fibre carriers used to collect food or as strainers. The artist was born in Swan Hill along the Murray River. As a young girl, her Indigenous mother introduced her to weaving traditions, and her father, an Irish farmer, passed on an interest in scavenging odds and ends. To make these works, Connelly-Northey finds scrap metal on empty farmland or in dried creek beds, and delicately folds it into the shape of a basket: bringing together both aspects of her heritage into a common form.
![Four works by Lorraine Connelly-Northey A group of baskets made from wire and feathers.](/system/files/styles/wide/private/2023-06/CONNELLY-NORTHEY_Group1_2008.142_2008.144_2008.145_2008.143_001.jpg?itok=71kIVp9T)
Lorraine Connelly-Northey / Waradgerie people / Australia b.1962 / Narrbong (String bag) 2007 (rusted gauze wire with white pelican down); Narrbong (String bag) 2007 (rusted gauze wire with galah feathers and pelican down); Narrbong (String bag) 2007 (rusted gauze wire with echidna quills); Narrbong (String bag) 2007 (rusted gauze wire with black pelican down) / Dimensions vary / Purchased 2008. The Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund / Collection: QAGOMA: Photograph: Natasha Harth