Perth artist Janine McAullay Bott works with weaving – creating objects and figures from palm fronds, grasses, reeds and other natural and man-made materials. Drawing directly from her Noongar heritage the works reference the methodologies and stories of her ancestors.
Weaving is part of my Noongar heritage – my great grandmother would make brooms to sweep the sand and there were things like fish traps, bowls and bush safes.
Her own writing forms an integral part of her practice, part of her personal methodology of art-making. In using text to detail the stories of her people and her own experience that are evoked in the sculptures, while not usually exhibited together, seen together with the woven forms they work to inhabit each other.
We all piled in the old car
Jostling for the window seat
The countryside rolls past
Farms and animals
Wildflowers and gums
The road would twist and turn
Down in the valley
Then up the hill
The kangaroos would race us
The birds would glide high
The memories last years
of the old car drives
Janine’s exhibition Yudarn, a Noongar word meaning ‘to tie’, is currently showing at Showcase Gallery – Central Institute of Technology, Northbridge Western Australia.
Exhibition runs 12-21 April 11-5pm (closed Sunday.)
Cnr Beaufort and Aberdeen St, Northbridge, Western Australia.
For more information on Janine see her gallery Artija Fine Art.