Merry Christmas! Mariko again. Things are getting quite festive here at the museum, with various Christmas-related functions happening and staff going on holiday leave. I am certainly looking forward to some time off to work on my internship assessments, with deadlines looming in the early months of 2012.

With this last blog of 2011, I thought it would be fitting to briefly re-cap the various Indigenous exhibitions the museum has been involved with over this past year. Each exhibition showcased different Indigenous Australian artists, communities, stories, knowledges, techniques and mediums.

Earlier in the year, the museum showed a special exhibition called tayenebe: Tasmanian Aboriginal women’s fibre work. This exhibition marked a culmination of a recent journey shared by a group of Tasmanian Aboriginal women in a determined effort to revive local Tasmanian Aboriginal culture, in particular to reconnect with the unique cultural craft of fibre and sea kelp work of their ancestors. It was therefore very fitting that the exhibition’s title incorporated the South Eastern Tasmanian Aboriginal word, “tayenebe”, meaning “exchange”. The exhibition showed a number of contemporary baskets and water carriers created through the sharing of knowledge about people, plants, land and sea during a series of workshops. The Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery (TMAG), the National Museum of Australia and Arts Tasmania co-managed the tayenebe project. You can find more details about the project and some beautiful images of the objects on our website.

To celebrate the 2011 National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee Week (3-10 July), known as NAIDOC Week, the museum showed an exhibition of eight linocuts by Torres Strait Islands artist Billy Missi. NAIDOC Week celebrates the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The travelling exhibition, Freshwater Saltwater – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island prints has actually been shown in various museums and art galleries across Australia since August 2010. It will continue to travel to various interstate locations throughout 2012. The exhibition presents prints from the museum’s collection by Indigenous artists from northern Australian communities. The artists used printmaking as a medium for strengthening their cultural identities and connections back to country and the relationships between water and people. Their vivid representations of marine life demonstrate how water holds deep spiritual and cultural significance for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as a rich source of food and culture.

Planning a visit to the museum over the Christmas and New Year break? The museum is open every day except Christmas Day, from 9:30am – 5:00pm (6:00pm in January), so be sure to come by to see the various displays and exhibitions, such as the Eora First People gallery which I have previously blogged about, and the special exhibition AQUA: A Journey into the World of Water.

Looking forward to catching up again in January 2012.

Cheers, Mariko

PS: If you missed my last post, you can find it here.