Draft:Lena Yarinkura
Lena Yarinkura | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1961 Maningrida, Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Organization | Maningrida Arts and Culture |
| Known for | Weaving, Contemporary Indigenous Australian art |
| Spouse | Bob Burruwal |
| Parent | Lena Djamarrayku (Mother) & Willie Mardangiya (Father) |
Lena Yarinkura is an Aboriginal Australian artist who primarily focused on pandanus weaving to create basketry and fibre sculptures. She was the first artist that used the weaving technique to make sculptural pieces such as animals. Most of her works involve the complexity of modern contemporary and indigenous styles.
Early Life[edit]
Lena Yarinkura was born in 1961 at Maringrida, a community located around 250 miles east of Darwin on the Liverpool River in northeast Arnhem Land.[1] Yarinkura was born into the Kune, Rembarrnga, and Burungku clans with the Yirritja moiety. She was the daughter of Lena Djamarrayku (1943-2005), the mother who is a skilled weaver & artisan, and Willie Mardangiya, the father. After Lena's father died when she was young, she was raised by her father's younger brother, Jack Wawee.[1] She learned string-bag weaving, pandanus basketry, and dilly bags from her mother. [2]
Career & Development[edit]
Her marriage with Bob Burruwal in the mid-1980s, she began to venture into bark painting and carving hollow log sculptures. With the change of media, she started a new approach to fibre by making traditional long yam sculptures from paperbark bounded by string, then painting them with red and white ochres. Towards the late 1980s, she began to make life-sized representations of ancestral cycles told by elders of western and central Arnhem Land. [3]
Significant Exhibitions and Awards[edit]
In Australia: [4]
- Gungamuk: Kamarrang Burruwal and Lena Yarinkura, Sheahan Galleries, Thirroul, NSW (2010)
- Ancestral Spirit Beings and Ceremonial Lorrkon, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne (2009)
- Maningrida Survey, Short St Gallery, Broome (2008)
- Spirit Beings, Lorrkon and Fibreworks, Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne (2007)
- Kamarrang Burruwal and Lena Yarinkura, Annandale Galleries, Sydney (2004)
- Organic Forms in Fibre, Aboriginal & Pacific Art, Sydney (2003); Yvonne Koolmatrie and Lena Yarinkura, Aboriginal & Pacific Art, Sydney (2001)
- Organic Forms, Aboriginal & Pacific Art, Sydney (1999)
- The Language of Place, Framed Gallery, Darwin (1996)
- Floating Life: Contemporary Aboriginal Fibre Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2009)
- Australian Culture Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2004)
- Maningrida Threads: Aboriginal Art from the Maningrida Collection, MCA, Sydney (2003)
- Transition and Resilience, JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design, Adelaide (2002)
- 12th Biennale of Sydney (2000)
- pinifex Runner: A Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Fibre Art, Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery, Sydney (1999)
International Exhibitions
- In the Heart of Arnhem Land: Myth and the Making of Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Musée de l’Hôtel-Dieu, Mantes-la-Jolie, France (2001)
Quotes[edit]
| “ | Spider is from beginning. It’s my Dreaming. It’s the big brown one. It’s not really a new idea – for a long time people have painted the spider. When I do bark painting, I paint the spider. But then I thought, ‘Oh, I can make my string spider because when he goes round and round ... | ” |
References[edit]
- ^ a b Skeritt, Henry; Baum, Tina (2016). Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists From Aboriginal Australia: From the Debra and Dennis Scholl Collection. Munich, Germany: DelMonico Books, Prestel. pp. 122–128. ISBN 9783791355917.
- ^ West, Margie. "Lena Yarinkura". Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Retrieved April 4, 2024.
- ^ Art Gallery of New South Wales; Watson, Ken; Jones, Jonathan; Perkins, Hetti, eds. (2004). Tradition today: indigenous art in Australia. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales. ISBN 978-0-7347-6344-0.
- ^ West, Margie. "Lena Yarinkura". MCA. Retrieved 28 April 2024.