Australian Aboriginal fibre sculpture

[1] This categorisation is often applied to objects with historically practical or ceremonial applications, as well as a growing category of new fibre forms which have been innovated in the past decades and produced for a fine art market.

Participants dance with animal figures, which are constructed by binding a core of paperbark or grass with string made from bark or other fibres.

[6] This provided more marketing, feedback and art world exposure to practitioners, which encouraged them to create innovative and ambitious products and exhibit their traditional works in new contexts.

[9] Most Aboriginal fibre artists are women, originally trained in making practical items such as fish traps, baskets, string bags and mats.

[10] However many urban Aboriginal artists have been inspired to learn traditional weaving skills, often using innovative materials or translating fibre works into other media such as cast metal and glass.

Yarinkura has gone on to a long and innovative career in fibre sculpture, also experimenting with using fish trap weaving techniques to represent the bodies of spirit beings.

This frame, which blocks out the basic shapes, is infilled with a knotted mesh of pandanus fibre, often coloured with various natural local dyes.

[18] In 2005, the large scale work Tjanpi Grass Toyota won the 22nd National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award.

The screenprinting room at Injalak Arts in Gunbalanya . The work on the table is by Ganbaladj Nabegeyo and is typical of the Kuninjku fibre sculpture tradition.
Two important natural materials for Kuninjku fibre art. Flagellaria indica (left) can be used to create strong frames for works, while Pandanus spiralis (right) is used to fill in these frames or independently to create woven works.