Tiwi Design, an arts centre based at Nguiu on Bathurst Island, a hundred kilometres north of Darwin, was established in 1969 by Tiwi artists Bede Tungatalum and Giovanni Tipungwuti. The centre is constitutionally set up to preserve and promote Tiwi culture through visual art practice.

Preservation of the Tiwi people’s collective inheritance is the primary concern of the artists who work there, so traditional methods of producing artwork rightly form the core of their work. The materials they use are central to this endeavour; the distinctive Tiwi four-colour palette comprises white and yellow ochre dug out from an isolated site on the western coast of the island, red ochre produced by heating yellow ochre, and black created from charcoal. These pigments are used in a range of ways: applied to iron wood to produce carved derivatives of burial poles; to bark to produce vessels unique to Tiwi culture; and to bodies for rite-of-passage ceremonies. Maintaining and recording their culture is the artists’ home base, and as the rate of change to their island way of life accelerates, this work assumes a healthily political stance.

This understanding of their primary role has enabled artists associated with Tiwi Design to consistently explore new creative avenues. Over the years, they have worked with a range of non-traditional media and artforms, most notably printmaking, ceramics and printed textiles. In the past, the best artists gravitated to work with textiles, so the centre built a print workshop that today takes up about one third of its total work space. Printed textiles have therefore been a cornerstone of Tiwi Design.

My own involvement with Tiwi Design started in early 2000 when I met the outgoing arts manager, Gillian Dallwitz, in Melbourne. Gillian explained that printed textiles were in danger of becoming the poor relation of the other disciplines, and the idea of introducing a new printing recipe to the artists began to take shape. While I’d been working in London, before arriving in Australia, I’d been involved in developing a commercially viable print recipe that used a small amount of iron powder to colour fabric. Gillian and I felt this might interest the Tiwi artists, and that the ‘natural’ development of this colour would help the textile work sit more comfortably with Tiwi Designs creative output. Gillian and her successor as arts manager, Anna McLeod, facilitated a trip for me to Tiwi Design, which resulted in a creative working relationship with the artists there that continued for a couple of years. I’d like to use this essay to outline the development of these relationships and to look retrospectively at some of the decision-making that moved our project from stage to stage.

The main artists involved were Osmond Kantilla, Stephen Kantilla, Natalie Tungatalum, Bede Tungatalum and Jean Baptiste Apuatimi. Osmond Kantilla has over twenty years experience working with printed textiles. He generally prints to order using pigment print pastes, bought ready mixed. He prints one-colour designs onto pre-dyed base fabrics in various colour combinations, often creating a rainbow effect by pulling two or more colours through a single screen. Stephen Kantilla had been assigned to the project as Osmond’s assistant, with a view to encouraging a new wave of Tiwi artists working in textiles. Although textiles at Tiwi Design have predominantly been the domain of male artists, this project also managed to attract two important female artists, Jean Baptiste Apuatimi and Natalie Tungatalum. At the end of the project, Bede Tungatalum—an important Tiwi artist and a founder of Tiwi Design—also became involved.

The aim of my first trip was to introduce the iron-powder technique to Osmond and Stephen Kantilla. We worked through the new recipe using existing screens to produce a series of printed swatches, and achieved various shades from burnt sienna through to a yellow ochre. Stephen quickly took responsibility for making the print paste, and Osmond was receptive to the results. Everyone liked the fact that we were using a natural pigment, and that the colours we were achieving not only looked good but were in the range of red and yellow ochres of the Tiwi palette. An unplanned bonus was that the new print technique referred to the distinctive red earth on the Tiwi Islands, which have a high iron content in the soil. Red earth is woven into Tiwi creation mythologies, including the creation of the Tiwi sun.

So far, so good: Stephen was successfully making the iron-powder recipe in rudimentary conditions; the colours looked appropriate for the existing designs; and the technique was accepted by the artists as an interesting development. We then began to print lengths of cloth, and I worked with Osmond and Natalie to create second colours for existing designs and began teaching Stephen how to print second colourways in register. This concluded stage one of the project.

As an outside artist working with an Aboriginal arts centre to introduce or develop a new technique, I was following a well-trodden path. My iron-powder recipe fitted snugly alongside previously introduced techniques such as the use of scalpels to cut designs directly, which had produced the hard edge that is, along with the rainbow effects already described, the defining technical characteristic of early Tiwi Design textiles. There had been a continuous legacy of assistance from outside, as people came to the island to pass on techniques for crafting artwork. I was surprised, however, at the lack of outside assistance to enable Tiwi artists to engage in discussions about issues or contribute to current debates.

In discussion with Anna McLeod, we agreed that on my next trip I would introduce base fabrics that came with cultural associations already attached. I sourced European damasks, jacquard weaves and lace, as well as performance fabrics and terry towelling. On my second trip, we printed more lengths of cloth, printing existing designs onto these new base fabrics and also using two new designs generated by Jean Baptiste Apuatimi and Natalie Tungatalum.

It was then agreed, in discussion with Anna McLeod, that on my return to Melbourne I would introduce some of these fabrics to Victorian members of groups that promote traditional sewing skills, such as the Australian Quilters Association and the Country Women’s Association. The result was an intriguing collection of textile objects, quilted blankets and appliqué, a fusion of two cultures and two creative disciplines. The two groups involved in the production of these objects made strange bedfellows but, interestingly, both represent rural Australia and both have gravitated to visual arts and crafts production to preserve and promote their culture.

Some of the best works were the patchwork and appliqué pieces by Jeanette Mayne. Jeanette had come to Australia from Scotland when she was two, learnt sewing skills from a young age while growing up in Glen Roy, and later, when her children were school-aged, learnt patchwork and appliqué from her aunt and other members of the Ballarat Patchwork Guild. She explained that in the small communities of rural Australia patchwork quilts were often made for newlyweds by the women of the community, who would come together to sew on a single piece of fabric that would eventually make up the quilt. The practice symbolised the close-knit bonds of the community and perhaps also referred to hard times and the need to spread financial loads. These blankets were constantly in use and regularly washed. After a while, they would need to be repaired, and this added new fabrics and gradually changed the appearance of the heirloom.

In September 2000 Osmond Kantilla travelled to Melbourne to look at a collection of Tiwi Design textiles that had been acquired over the years by the National Gallery of Victoria. Osmond and I met with Judith Ryan, the senior curator of Aboriginal Art, and found that a number of the designs held in the collection had been lost to the Tiwi Islands, probably as a result of ineffectual recording and archiving systems at Tiwi Design. Osmond was also able to provide Judith with new information and detail about the collection. He identified two designs by Bede Tungatalum that are thought to have been produced in the late seventies and are some of the first to employ the scalpel-cut technique. Osmond judged these to be significant omissions from Tiwi Design. The NGV was able to supply high-quality monochromatic photographs of the textile fragments, and two designs were subsequently reconstructed by hand and with the use of CAD programs.

During this reconstruction process, Osmond embarked on a new textile design of his own. This was a more significant step than it sounds, as Osmond had last produced a textile design in 1986 and had initially been reluctant to commit himself to producing another. On my first trip to Nguiu, I had helped him introduce a second colour to his original design, and later we talked about creating a new design while he was in Melbourne.

During the restoration of the Bede Tungatalum designs, we discussed the role of artists in the Tiwi community. In Osmond’s mind, their role was to record traditional practices that were disappearing or under threat of disappearing. I was pleased when he started work on a new design, taking a scarification pattern as his starting point. This kind of scarification is no longer practised, so the starting point fitted with his thoughts on the role of a Tiwi artist, and fabric seemed a good choice for a design developed for skin.

The positives for this new design and the lost Bede Tungatalum designs were then returned to the Tiwi Islands, put onto screens, and used for the next wave of printing, mindful of a forthcoming London exhibition, then only a couple of months away. After printing the new designs, the artists started producing some rudimentary patchwork pieces, which were stretched over very large wooden screen frames and propped up around the walls of the printroom. This new work was produced, in the main, by Osmond and Margaret Kerinauia, with the sewing undertaken by Osmond’s cousin Noreen Kerinauia. On reflection, the work was plainly a response to the patchwork pieces produced by the Victorian sewing groups, a number of which had been taken to Tiwi Design. About half a dozen such pieces were made in the following two days, and it was obvious to everyone that this was quite a significant development.

These new patchwork paintings from the Tiwi Islands and the hybrid textile pieces made by the sewing groups in rural Victoria were shown together at London Printworks. Osmond, his partner Marie, and I went to London with the work, with a view to getting involved with the installation plan and the marketing of the show. London Printworks is a contemporary arts organisation based in Brixton, with an exhibition program, education program, printing workshop and design studio. Its exhibition program, which commissions artists to discuss issues through the medium of printed textiles, has an international reputation.

The London Printworks program is built around new-work commissions, and they were rightly keen to develop a new-work component to this project. They had planned an opportunity for Osmond to engage directly with London-based artists, curators and printed textiles practitioners through a practical workshop. I was also keen for him to develop new work, ever mindful of old-school curatorial practices of travelling to the ‘periphery’ to bring exoticism back to the centre, and of the lack of context this approach provides for the audience.

Many directions for new work were floated. Brixton is home to probably the highest profile Jamaican community outside of the West Indies, and everyone at London Printworks was fascinated by the position reggae music held in Osmond’s life. He has a longstanding love of reggae and had even formed a band—the Tiwi Wailers—along with Bede Tungatalum, playing Bob Marley covers at the Nguiu Club on Saturday nights (and, I think, a couple of gigs in Darwin). London Printworks artists who were looking at the expansion of Jamaican culture through music wondered whether Jamaican music/culture had had an influence on how Osmond saw the world. Everyone was excited about where this project could go, but Osmond was hesitant. In truth, he never seemed comfortable at London Printworks, where he regularly complained of being cold (after about a week of cold, the London weather deteriorated, and it even snowed for a couple of days).

In hindsight, the weather and the other difficulties weren’t insurmountable. I now consider I was overly protective of Osmond in London. He may have missed a remarkable opportunity to take advantage of the institution, which offered the chance to make significant new work, to develop a working relationship with other artists, and to respond to being in Brixton.

The Tiwi Design exhibition opened, and the work was well received at the private view, with positive feedback from critics and artists throughout our stay. In between working on the show we went to the museums, and friends of London Printworks took Osmond and Marie on other excursions, including to Buckingham Palace and for a ride on the huge Ferris wheel at the Southbank. We all stayed with an extraordinary family in Brixton who made them welcome and invited people with an interest in the Tiwi Islands, reggae or Aboriginal culture for huge evening meals. I think it was those meals, the family and their friends that made the biggest impact on Osmond and Marie.

In preparing to speak at the Between You and Me event, I was forced to consider all the outcomes of the project and, I guess as with any project, there are many things I’d change if I had the chance to do it again. The project developed organically, for want of a better term, over two years and decisions were, in the main, made on the run. The development I’ve just plotted follows a fairly logical progression through the project, but inevitably we also went down some avenues that I haven’t bothered to mention and which in retrospect look a bit odd. At one stage, I thought the way to proceed might be to design a collection of textile products and significantly upgrade the Tiwi Design production values. To this end, I gave pieces of the new fabrics and product designs to highly skilled craftspeople who made bags and other products. Instinctively, we didn’t take this idea any further, and now it seems obvious that the development of products like these would not have allowed the kind of response we had to the patchwork pieces.

The project survived that diversion, but midway through it Stephen Kantilla left Tiwi Design. Stephen had taken on the responsibility of preparing the new iron-powder recipe and was also the person I’d taught to print two-colour designs in registration. I had gravitated to Stephen because he was clearly the most capable, and I could envisage him taking over as the key printed textiles practitioner at Tiwi Design. My decision to put most of my effort into one person means that Tiwi Design no longer uses the new iron-powder recipe and, as far as I know, they don’t print the two-colour designs we developed during the project.

The work produced during the project has won awards and received critical acclaim in the UK and Australia. But after two years, and despite some spectacular successes, one of the project’s central aims—to successfully pass on the ability to print the new recipe—has yet to be achieved.