I posted a fascinating video from the BBC yesterday about Edward Burtynsky who has travelled the world and recorded what we do with the planet and shown these scenes as art. He said he is not an expert environmentalist but that the planet was ours collectively and what we did and how we did it mattered. People who have been doing this for hundreds of years know this well - and there was no better person than Shirley Macnamara, an Indjalandji artist, whose exhibition has just opened at the Gallery of Modern Art to put that into context for us. In short, her art is from the earth and what grows on it. Her main material is spinifex- a ubiquitous grass here in Australia. She collects grasses, twigs, bleached bones from cattle, feathers, echidna quills, wire and copper left over from mines, and creates her beautifully crafted art in a remote part of Queensland. From her grandmother she learnt to respect the country and to never take more than she needed from it, to allow balance and and enough room for it to grow back again and be shared. Her art stems from the Earth. She has created the most beautiful baskets, thickly woven with strong exteriors but sometimes the inner parts are soft and feathery reminding us again of the need to be protective and caring for others but also of our environment to which we all belong.
This piece is entitled Dust Dream - precarious, dusty, transient like dreams, blown away in a moment.
Her bush fascinators are colourful and a bright as the birds from whose feathers they come from.
The exhibition is on at QAG 21st Sept to 1st March 2020.
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