Being Tiwi

Being Tiwi bought together prints and paintings by nine artists from Australia’s Tiwi Islands. Located to the north of Darwin in the Northern Territory at the juncture of the Arafura and Timor seas, Bathurst and Melville islands are home to the Tiwi people – the fiercely independent, culturally unique, traditional owners of the land. 

‘Tiwi’ loosely translates as ‘one people’, and island culture is characterised by a shared belief in the need to keep Tiwi customs alive. 

The artworks in Being Tiwi highlighted how contemporary ideas and visual forms connect to and express transformations in culture. Tiwi motifs and designs (known as Jilamara) draw on a range of influences, the most important being the body painting which accompanies two significant Tiwi ceremonies: Kulama, which celebrates life, and Pukumani, a complex funereal ritual. 

Bridging the past and the present, Being Tiwi included the first prints produced on the islands in 1969 along with work recently acquired for the MCA Collection and new work commissioned specifically for the exhibition. From the intricate to the gestural, and using yellow, red and white ochres sourced from the islands’ environs, these artworks highlighted the distinctiveness of Tiwi iconography. ..... Click here to read more and watch the videos

REPARIATED IMAGES

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Pukumani at Museums Victoria

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Museum Notes

"Purukuparli and Bima were the first people on the Tiwi islands and Purukuparli passed down the correct way to bury the dead - the dances, the songs and the designs. A ceremony is held at the graveside about six months after burial and relatives paint their bodies with designs to hide their identity from mapurtiti, the harmful spirits of the dead. Painted bark containers called tunga are broken over the carved and painted poles erected in a circle around the grave. Professor Baldwin Spencer collected an extraordinary array of these containers each painted with a unique design from Bathurst and Melville Islands between 1911 and 1915 and were exhibited in the years following in Spencer Gallery at the old museum site in Russell Street." 

IMAGE #2 "A number of examples of this ornament were collected by Baldwin Spencer who was hosted on Bathurst and Melville Islands in 1911 by the legendary buffalo shooter, Joe Cooper. The two men had met in Darwin the year before, and their collaboration resulted in over a thousand objects being collected mainly from Tiwi people on the islands, but also from mainlanders, primarily Iwadja people who worked directly for Cooper in his camp. Spencer is known to have purposely purchased a bolt of coloured cloth in Darwin to take with him on this trip to use as a commodity of exchange. No doubt he also traded for important artefacts with sticks of tobacco.

Significance Around ...1993, a group of Tiwi artists from Jilimara Arts on Melville Island visited the museum to see the collections and one old woman amongst them was the late Blanche Puruntatameri. On seeing the feathered neck ornament called tokairinga collected by Baldwin Spencer in 1911 and a number of others collected around the same time by others, she was keen to understand how they had been made. A year or so later Blanche visited again and asked to see these neck ornaments once more, and this time stuck her fingers right into the centre of the feathered ball remarking, 'Ah, that's how they did it!' After her first visit, Blanche had unsuccessfully tried to make these ornaments relying on photographs taken during that visit, and she was determined to discover the detail of their construction in order to make them properly, and ensured she was included in the next visit to Melbourne in order to revisit the museum and check again on how these were made.

LINKS

• https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/173773
• https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/181084
• https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/191845

Muluwurri Museum

The museum will hold everything that belongs to us Tiwi and will stay here forever - it's really important that we share knowledge - for my culture, for me as an artist. I think it's really important to share.

Different artists come from different areas and land, but we all bring the one Tiwi culture to this place to keep it alive so the younger generation of our family can come to this place and see what we left.

- PEDRO WONAEMIRRI

The Muluwurri Museum was named after Muluwurri, an ancestor of the Mungatopi family and traditional owner of the Milikapiti area. It is managed by the Jilamara Executive Committee and staff. Established in 1988, the collection is held in trust for the Milikapiti community. ..... CLICK HERE TO GO TO SOURCE

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Photograph Roy Pope Mellville Island 1941