Northern exposure: world listens to the woven word

In a pint-sized gallery in Mparntwe (Alice Springs), I'm drawn to a lopsided nest the size of a baby's car seat, a loose weave of dry grasses and strands of colourful raffia that looks like the work of a bowerbird on acid.

It's one of the many arresting artworks created by the Tjanpi Desert Weavers, a collective nudging 500 women artists from 26 remote communities on the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) lands bridging the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia.

Tjanpi artists are celebrated for their bowls and baskets; for cheeky toy-like camp dogs (papas), birds, lizards, and "happy tree" sculptures; for vessels that reference termite mounds and mountain ranges; for lampshades and big-ticket installations.

The creator of my nest, sitting atop a white plinth in the Tjanpi HQ, located in the town's Aboriginal Art Precinct, was the late Judy Martin, artist, healer and storyteller from Mimili, a community on NPY lands, 500 kilometres south-west of Alice Springs.

In Indigenous culture, weaving is an important form of storytelling and requires patience and proficiency. Indigenous woven crafts serve both spiritual and practical purposes. "Tjanpi" (pronounced "jumpy") is the Pitjantjatjara word for desert grass. The works on show here are woven from minarri (greybeard grass, Amphipogon caricinus), wangunu (naked woollybutt, Eragrostis eriopoda), raffia and wool; emu feathers, gumnuts and native seeds optional.

In other weaver communities around Australia, materials might include fibres from pandanus, palms, jungle vines, kurrajong bark and stringybark eucalyptus.

Artworks by Tjanpi Desert Weavers have been acquired by most of the nation's key art galleries and museums. They featured at the 56th Venice Biennale and in the National Gallery of Australia exhibition last year, Know My Name. Short films - Tangki (Donkey) and Kukaputju (The Hunter) - starring Tjanpi "characters" have played at various film festivals. Look out for them at this year's Desert Mob exhibition at the Araluen Arts Centre in Alice Springs (until October 22, see desertmob.com). Tjanpi figures were part of the multi-media exhibition, Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, at Musee du Quai Branly in Paris this year, and they are on display at the Vapriikki Museum Centre, in Tampere, Finland, until October.

Tjanpi work, says Tjanpi manager Michelle Young, embodies the energies and rhythms of country, culture and community and brings its artists great joy.

"It gives women an opportunity to go out into Country to harvest grass, hunt for food or collect bush medicine," says Young. "There's a coming together and the opportunity to learn about custodial responsibilities to country and to sacred sites.

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"It's another unique space for women to be in, doing something that they love. There's a constant burst of creativity and innovation."

It's not unusual for family groups to be weaving together, says Young. "To have a granddaughter being taught by a grandmother, and her aunties being makers as well ... there's often an interconnected family dynamic."

Tjanpi Desert Weavers is the social enterprise of the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council (NPYWC), formed in response to the land rights struggles of the late 1970s. Tjanpi began in 1995 as a series of basket-making workshops facilitated by the Council.

The Aboriginal Art Precinct in Alice Springs is a social enterprise hub a couple of streets away from the town's gallery mall. Along with Tjanpi Desert Weavers are Bindi Mwerre Anthurre Artists (artists with disability), Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands Art Centre (keeping the Namatjira/Hermannsburg tradition alive), and Tangentyere Artists. Tjanpi pays upfront for work that is delivered via field officers or anyone coming into town, putting income straight into women's pockets, says Young.

Indigenous fibre art is having a moment.

A 2.8-metre pandanus sail representing the relationship between Yolngu people from Arnhem Land and their Macassan neighbours in Indonesia won weaver Margaret Rarru (Garrawurra) last year's $100,000 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA).

The winning entry, Dhomala (pandanus sail), is made from woven pandanus, hand-rolled kurrajong bark string, and natural plant dyes including a black dye reserved especially for the artist.

The art of Tjanpi is slightly different from that of other weavers across the country where weaving is traditionally tied to culture and responsibility, explains Young.

"Top End weavers, for example, have a strict colour palette and a particular way of working, whereas Tjanpi weaving allows for a little more freedom. It's more an introduced contemporary art, although you do see community quirks," she says.

"That wackiness and whimsy is fully on display because the artists are not having to conform to a set of rules."

The writer travelled to Alice Springs as a guest of the G'Day Group.

Pictures: Vicki Bosisto; Susan Skelly