Seven Sisters

Exhibition Details

EXHIBITION DETAILS

Organising Institution
FORM Gallery (formerly CRAFTWEST Centre for Contemporary Craft)

PROJECT CURATOR Kevin Murray
CURATORIAL ADVISOR Nalda Searles

ARTISTS
Kantjupayi Benson (Blackstone Community, Western Desert); Mavis Bolton (WA); Jean Burke (Wingellinna Community, Western Desert); Kate Campbell-Pope (WA); India Flint (SA); Ivy Hopkins (Wingellinna Community, Western Desert); Elizabeth Riley (WA); Jean Riley (WA); Philomena Hali (NT); Elaine Wanatjura Lane (Blackstone Community, Western Desert); Thisbe Purich (NT); Stacia Roberts (Wingellinna Community, Western Desert); Nalda Searles (WA); Holly Story (WA).

Category
A, B, C (selected)

Medium
indigenous fibres, textiles, mixed media

Installation
34 works, 100 - 150 square metres
(display equipment provided)

COST SHARE
WA tba
Interstate tba

DOCUMENTATION
5 Catalogues gratis. Media kit with press release and digital images
Didactic Panels

EDUCATION
Education Packages (includes teachers notes, gallery activity sheet)

Crates
Up to 6 crates, totalling approximately
4.5 cubic metres

Tour Duration
January 2005 - December 2005

ARTIST ON THE MOVE & ARTBUS
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Figures in a group.

Seven Sisters presents the work of a number of indigenous and non-indigenous fibre artists living in the western half of Australia. It is the first major exhibition to document the highly significant creative collaboration undertaken amongst these artists over the last three decades. Participants include one of Western Australia's most respected fibre artists, Nalda Searles and a number of practitioners she has inspired and worked with, both indigenous and non-indigenous, over the past twenty five years.
In particular, the exhibition highlights the cultural exchange undertaken between Searles and Aboriginal women artists from the wheat belt town of Narrogin and Australia's Western Desert. Searles has learnt their language and absorbed their stories, including the Kungkarangkalpa, or Seven Sisters story that interprets the Pleiades star cluster. The story (which has multiple variations in a number of cultures across Australia and the rest of the world) has provided the thematic core of the exhibition, as a story about women and their relationship within the (physical and spiritual) Australian landscape. To quote exhibition curator, Kevin Murray, "This key Australian story today resonates with the experience of the stolen generation (Rabbit Proof Fence), mystery of the stars and creative engagement with place."
The works included in the exhibition have cultural significance on a number of levels. Non-indigenous participants include some of West Australia's leading fibre artists, whose methodologies of working with indigenous plants and fibres (such as Xanthorrhoea, grasses, natural plant dyes and resins) give material expression to the process of 'replanting' indigenous culture onto the history of colonisation. Their works provide a complex tracing of social, historical and cultural interaction between Australian artists and the environment they work from.