Weaving around the Traps
an exhibition of recent sculptures, weavings, fish traps and paintings
in collaboration with Maningrida Arts and Culture and Ngukurr Arts
1 - 19 April 2008

The installation based exhibition, ‘Weaving Around The Traps’ opens on Tuesday 1 April. The extensive survey of over 35 artists from Maningrida Arts and Culture and Ngukurr Arts hangs from the high ceilings and walls of the gallery space on Melbourne’s busy Johnston Street.

Surrounding the sculptural works are serene paintings by Allan Joshua Junior. In this, his first major show, mesmerising acrylics on canvas explore the rippling effects made by water, animals and spirits as they pass through fish nets, once commonly used by Allan’s ancestors. These 15 works serve as a backdrop to a floating extravaganza of woven fish traps, Yawk-Yawks (mermaids), fish and stingrays. A five metre woven crocodile dangles from fishing line amongst a photographic wall of mangroves. Thirty Mimihs display an intriguing range of emotions: sadness, glee, anger and surprise. These spirit creatures complete the assemblage of underwater beings in an environment constructed from pandanus, jungle vine, beech hibiscus and decorated ochre burial poles (Lorrkon).

Many of these artists’ works have never been shown in Melbourne before and certainly this is the first collaborative exhibition that combines the talents of artists from Ngukurr in South East Arnhem Land, and Maningrida from the regions Northern Tip. The intricate paintings of Allan Joshua Jnr represent many months of preparation over the ‘build up’ and monsoonal wet season. Contrasting this is work by emerging artists like 24 year old Josephine Wurrkidj whose curious Mimih sculpture is moody and intriguing. This sculpture hangs alongside woven Yawk-Yawks by Telstra Award winning artist Lena Yarinkura and master conical fish trap weaver George Ganyjibala, who at aged 72, is still making and teaching the art of weaving traps with jungle vine. The exhibition brings together diverse and intricate clan designs and ritual rarrk patterning, as it pays homage to the underwater spirit world.

**Proceeds from sales go to the artists as well as towards completion of ‘The Marra Mapping Project,’ a collaboration between artist Simon Normand, and traditional owners of the Gulf of Carpentaria.


Since 1996 numerous field trips to country have been taking place to record and map Marra stories around some of the most remote regions of the Australian coast. The book, Mermaid Country, will be published at the end of the year as result of this ongoing documentation.

Field trip paintings and stories by renowned Ngukurr artist Maureen Marrangulu Thompson are on show for a wider public audience for the first time. Her paintings allude to family histories, the mission era, colonisation, and songs of the creation beings like the Yawk-Yawks, (Kilyirring-Kilyirring) who are still known to custodians of the Roper River Region.

The exhibition is a poignant reminder of what can be learned from indigenous culture when it ‘weaves around’ integration and assimilation with the western world. Viewers may conclude that the sacred knowledge still held around the swamps and waterholes of the Arnhem coastline has an important place in our contemporary landscape, where we increasingly search for spiritual connection.