Entertainment
20 July, 2025
Weaving in ancestral ways
A NEW exhibition at Cairns Art Gallery celebrates the strength and continuity of First Nations fibre art, with six Indigenous weavers exploring stories of Country, culture and connection through contemporary works.
Opened late last month, the free exhibition runs until September 14 and features vessels, containers and large-scale installations created using traditional techniques, twining, looping, stitching and binding, reimagined through a contemporary lens.
From desert spinifex to rainforest lawyer cane and Torres Strait ghost-nets, the works trace ancestral practice across diverse landscapes and communities.
Associate curator at Queensland Art Gallery’s Gallery of Modern Art, Sophia Sambono, said the exhibition “enacts ancestral knowledges and celebrates intergenerational practice”, describing the artworks as “vessels of knowledge and containers of connection that honour the women who bind the fabric of families and culture together”.
The exhibition features works from both local and Queensland-based artists, including Sonja Carmichael of the Ngugi people of Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) and Brisbane, Vanessa Cannon of the Kuku Nyungkul and Kaantju peoples from the Mossman region, Shirley Macnamara of the Indjalandji Dhidhanu and Alyawarr peoples from the Barkly Tablelands, Philomena Yeatman of the Gunggandji and Kuku Yalanji peoples in the Yarrabah area, Ivy Minniecon, a Kuku Yalanji, Kabi Kabi, Gooreng Gooreng and South Sea Islander woman based in Brisbane and Paula Savage, a Mualgal woman from the Serganilgal clan group of Dabu on Moa Island, with ancestral ties to the Kaurareg Nation of Muralag and Kiriri.
Their pieces form a material dialogue between past and present, grounded in Country and carried forward through shared threads of knowledge, innovation and survival.
Our Stories: Contemporary Indigenous Weaving is open daily at Cairns Art Gallery. Entry is free and no bookings are required
