Mara Ninti (Clever Hands) Liritja (necklaces) by Lynette Lewis
Ernabella Arts & The Indigenous Jewellery Project
Women in Design
DESIGN Canberra 2017
Craft ACT: Craft & Design Centre
Curated by Emily McCulloch Childs
Artist’s statement:
My name is Lynette Lewis. I am an artist and mother from Ernabella. I use my hands to express my country and my culture. I am interested in the patterns, the lines and colours I see in the world around me.
I create work in ceramics, painting and more recently contemporary jewellery. For a long time I have also created traditional jewellery using tatu (seeds) and punu (timber carving.) My mother, Atipalku Intjalki, is also an artist; she passed these jewellery skills down to me.
In my painting and ceramics I tell the tjala Tjukurpa (honey ant story) of my father’s country, a place called Makiri near Fregon in the APY Lands. Tjala or honey ants live deep in the ground beneath Mulga trees in tunnels called nyinantu.
When I create liritja (necklaces) I use beautiful coloured wooden beads and also wayanu (quandong) seeds cast in resin. Resin holds light. The resin beads glow with their beautiful colours in the same way the mana maru (backside) of the tjala do when they are full of sweet honey.
The Indigenous Jewellery Project
The Indigenous Jewellery Project is the first nation-wide Indigenous contemporary jewellery project, working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owned art centres across Australia, comprising research, workshops, photography, films, and exhibitions.
The Indigenous Jewellery Project was created by McCulloch & McCulloch co-director Emily McCulloch Childs to help traditional jewellers at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owned art centres across Australia and contemporary jewellers. These have included Erub Erwer Meta in the Torres Strait Islands, Ikuntji Artists in Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory, Ernabella Arts in the APY Lands, South Australia and Buku-Larrnggay Mulka in Yirrkala, NE Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.
IJP has run workshops with artist Kate Rohde and contemporary jeweller Melinda Young and been involved in over 14 exhibitions including at the JamFactory, Adelaide, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Darwin, NGV Store, National Contemporary Jewellery Award, Griffith Regional Gallery and touring to Sturt Centre for Design, NSW, Stanley Street Galleries, Sydney, Craft ACT, Canberra, Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, Desert Mob, Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs, and the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin.
Lynette Lewis: Mara Ninti (Clever Hands)
Lynette Lewis is an artist, ceramicist and jeweller from Ernabella Arts, Pukatja community, APY Lands, in northern South Australia. She learnt jewellery from her mother, artist Atipalku Intjalki. Anangu jewellery is a thousands year old tradition that is still practiced very much today. Jewellers use native plant seed beads such as quandong: called wayanu in Pitjantjatjara, and gum nuts, called tatü, to make liritja (necklaces).
In 2015 Lynette participated in an Indigenous Jewellery Project workshop with contemporary jeweller & UNSW lecture Melinda Young, and IJP curator Emily McCulloch Childs. Her work focuses exclusively on the Anangu liritja tradition.
Using a combination of natural seed beads, seeds cast in resin during IJP’s previous workshop at Ernabella with Kate Rohde, and other beads, Lynette created a stunning series of necklaces, displaying her skill with design and colour.
A diptych of these were selected for the National Contemporary Jewellery Award, Griffith Regional Gallery, making Lynette the first Aboriginal jeweller to be a finalist in this award.
Mara Ninti is her first solo exhibition.