Tjanpi Tinka (goanna) sculpture, Janet Forbes, Papulankutja

• Artist - Janet Forbes
• Community - Papulankutja
• Art Centre/Community organisation - Tjanpi Desert Weavers
• Catalogue number - 2734d/15
• Materials - Grass, raffia and wool
• Size(cm) - H22 L98 W15

Tjanpi (meaning ‘dry grass’) evolved from a series of basket weaving workshops held on remote communities in the Western Desert by the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunyjatjara Womens’ Council in 1995. Building on traditions of using fibre for medicinal, ceremonial and daily purposes, women took easily to making coiled baskets. These new-found skills were shared with relations on neighboring communities and weaving quickly spread. Today there are over 400 women across 28 communities making baskets and sculptures out of grass and working with fibre in this way is firmly embedded in Western and Central Desert culture. While out collecting desert grasses for their fibre art women visit sacred sites and traditional homelands, hunt and gather food for their families and teach their children about country. Tjanpi Desert Weavers is Aboriginal owned and is directed by an Aboriginal executive. It is an arts business but also a social enterprise that provides numerous social and cultural benefits and services to weavers and their families. Tjanpi’s philosophy is to keep culture strong, maintain links with country and provide meaningful employment to the keepers and teachers of the desert weaving business.

Janet is a Ngaanyatjarra woman from Blackstone (Papulankutja ) community, which lies 100 kilometers west of the WA, NT and SA borders, otherwise known as the surveyor generals corner. Janet was born in 1962 at Warburton Mission. Her father was Nyunma from Tawulbalyana, a very famous tradional owner of the region around Papulankutja, and her mother, Yuminiya, was from Waltjatjara near Blackstone. Janet's mother was a very strong woman who was involved with initiating the Ngaanyatjarra Council and worked with the NPY Women’s Council. Janet attended the mission and school in Warburton. During the holidays she would travel with her parents on foot around the region, hunting and gathering and visiting family and significant and familiar areas near Blackstone. She then attended school in Kalgoorlie for one year. She later moved to Norseman, where she married Craig Morrison and had three children, Albert, Jade and Trenita. In the early years of Blackstone Women's Centre, she tried her hand at various crafts including fabric painting and printing, e-dyeing T-shirts and making spinifex paper. She currently paints at Papulankutja Arsts, usually the Nganur (bush turkey) story or the Papulankutja (two lizards) stories. Janet learnt to make baskets from her older sister Ruby Reid and was taught to make artifacts by her mother. More recently she has taken to making tjanpi sculptures with great enthusiasm and has produced a large quantity of unique and high quality work. Many years of wood carving has given her a good feel for three dimensional work. Recently she attended a metal castng workshop in Brisbane which further excited her sculptural imagination.

Made from a combination of native desert grasses, seeds and feathers, commercially bought raffia (sometimes dyed with native plants), string and wool, Tjanpi artworks are unique, innovative and constantly evolving. Some baskets and sculptures contain raffia which is purchased in Australia, imported from Madagascar. Natural hanks of raffia can sometimes be dyed with commercial dyes and less often with natural dyes. Most popular grass used in artworks is Minarri (greybeard grass, Amphipogon caricirus)

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