Seven Sisters – Fibre Works Arising from the West

Seven Sisters presented the work of a number of Indigenous and non-Indigenous fibre artists living in the western half of Australia. It was the first major exhibition to document the highly significant creative collaboration undertaken amongst these artists over thirty years. The works included in the exhibition had cultural significance on a number of levels. Non-Indigenous participants include some of West Australia’s leading fibre artists, whose methodologies of working with Indigenous plants and fibres (such as Xanthorrhoea, grasses, natural plant dyes and resins) gave material expression to the process of ‘replanting’ Indigenous culture onto the history of colonisation. Their works provided a complex tracing of social, historical and cultural interaction between Australian artists and the environment they worked from.

Indigenous works in the exhibition included some of the most significant art produced in Western Australia. The unique fabric figures made by Mavis Bolton, Jean Riley and Lizzie Riley in Narrogin surveyed traditional women utilising western networks to ensure the longevity of their cultural practices, and were featured in the first major Noongar retrospective at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, South West Central (January, 2003). Fibre basketry and woven figures from the Western Desert reflected the environment and culture indicative of this region.