AN intriguing work by Elisa Jane Carmichael received the $2500 Highly Commended Ruth Amery Award in this year's Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award, on display at the Wangaratta Art Gallery.
Handstitched and dyed with mangrove bark and eucalyptus leaves, Mirrigimpa, 2024 depicts the sea eagle, an animal of great significance to Quandamooka people, providing knowledge of sustainable and communal hunting and fishing practices and embodying Ancestral cultural practices.
Mirrigimpa sings with the changing tides, signalling when the mullet are coming and carries spiritual and cultural connections to sea and sky Country.
The work incorporates mullet fish scales, string, Talwalpin nets and scent from eucalyptus, banksia, casuarina and melaleuca leaves.
The inner bark fibre of Talwalpin (cotton tree), used for millennia to make for nets and baskets, has been stripped and woven into string.
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Together the materials and methods of Mirrigimpa carry the scent and memories of Country while imagining Mirrigimpa’s vision, soaring across Quandamooka waters.
Elisa Jane Carmichael is a Ngugi woman belonging to the Quandamooka People of Moreton Island/Mulgumpin and North Stradbroke Island/Minjerribah, Queensland.
Her practice draws on Ancestral knowledge, matrilineal connections, memories of place and relationships with Country.
She is passionate about shining a light on the cultural brilliance of her Ancestors so that these stories can be kept alive for future generations.
Carmichael’s work is held in private and public collections across Australia, including The British Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and National Gallery of Victoria.
While judging the 2025 event - the $40,000 acquisitive award going to Jemima Wyman for her work, Haze 19, 2024 - arts leader and curator Dr Blair French remarked upon the high quality of all the works entered.
"The Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award 2025 exhibition features 10 substantial works created by artists at different career stages engaging with a wide range of processes," he said.
"It makes for a rich and deeply thought-provoking viewing experience and highlights how textile practices offer contemporary artists unique means to hinge together material making and conceptual speculation, personal and collective experience, human touch and technological production."
See the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award 2025 at the Wangaratta Art Gallery until 17 August.
