Image details
Source: Pexels Free Photos
By Myles Russell Cook, Swinburne University of Technology/Senior Curator of Australian and First Nations Art at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)
30 March 2015
Contemporary clothing design draws on many traditions, appropriating and reworking what has gone before and learning from the past. Australian Aboriginal dress is rarely cited as a key inspiration – and, in that, I think many designers are missing an opportunity.
19th-century images of Aboriginal people from south-eastern Australia frequently feature subjects wearing possum skin cloaks.
More often than not the photographs show the fur side of the cloak, the part that was traditionally worn next to the skin for warmth and protection. The inner, worked skin – not shown in the pictures – was decorated with important images, stories and narratives.
Possum skin cloaks typically comprise several possum pelts sewn together with kangaroo sinew. One side of the cloak is entirely furred, while the other is fleece. The decorations are typically made with hot-wire and pokerwork, and designs are burned into the hide.
Historically, possum skin cloaks were ubiquitous throughout south-eastern Australia. They were highly collectible by settler Australians and were easily – and forcibly – replaced by much inferior woven blankets.
By the mid-20th century a little over a dozen had survived, preserved in museums.
Koori artists Vicki Couzens, Lee Darroch, Maree Clarke and Treahna Hamm began a movement of reclaiming the practice of possum skin cloak-making as a contemporary design practice in 1999. Prior to this Wergaia/Wamba Wamba artist Kelly Koumalatsos had also begun making cloaks in the 1990s.
This has resulted in new cloaks being made for the first time in more than 150 years. (As possums are protected in Australia, pelts are imported from New Zealand, where possums are a pest.)
A number of cloaks were made for the 2006 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony; they also appeared on the shoulders of elders during the 2008 federal government’s apology to the stolen generations.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Ad(dressing) Indigeneity 