Bábbarra Designs artists share knowledge exchange highlights after touring India

Top End textile designers have shared a highlight reel of their ongoing tour of India’s iconic art workshops. Watch the video here.

Top End artists are set to share artistic trade secrets following a cultural knowledge exchange tour of India.

Maningrida designers Janet Marawarr and Deborah Wurrkidj, representing Bábbarra Designs, met with artists from Trijanga’s Santal community, who specialise in canvas painting and silk weaving.

Ms Wurrkidj said she hoped to tell the story of how fabric was made in the small village.

“We saw how they make colour,” she said.

“In the little village the lady was painting with white on brown and she was telling a story.

“They make the green colour from cow poo.”

Maningrida artists Janet Marawarr and Deborah Wurrkidj are finding out more about India art. Picture: Supplied

The final stage of the artists’ tour on Friday will bring them to a high profile woodblock studio in Bangalore known for printing Liberty textiles.

Bábbarra Designs manager Jessica Stalenberg said the group would collaborate to create printed textiles using finely carved woodblocks.

She said six Bábbarra Designs pieces would be used to make the woodblocks.

Maningrida artists Janet Marawarr and Deborah Wurrkidj are representing Bábbarra Designs as they travel across India for a cultural knowledge exchange tour. Picture: Supplied

Ms Marawarr’s and Ms Wurrkidj’s Jarracharra (Dry Season Wind) exhibition, which prompted the tour, is being shown at the Indian Museum in Kolkata.

The exhibition has been displayed in seven countries.

Ms Stalenberg said the women have been exchanging knowledge with other women’s groups while on tour.

“It’s quite significant that they’ve come,” she said.

“I think they were invited because they were very senior and they will be able to handle the cultural difference here and also gain something from the textiles they’re going to see in India.”

Kolkata Consul-General Rowan Ainsworth said the artists’ tour would play a role in Australia’s Indigenous Diplomacy Agenda.

“We want to promote the excellence of Indigenous Australia to the world, that’s what we’re getting out of it as a consulate,” she said.

“That’s important to us, that we’re able to create or make a better-rounded reach of Australia overseas by ensuring people are aware of Australian Indigenous culture.”

It took about six months to plan the Bábbarra Designs artists' tour of India. Picture: Supplied

Ms Ainsworth said the tour had been in the works for at least six months.

“It takes a while just to pull all the bits together,” she said.

“Of course, one of the issues is that the artists themselves are very busy, so finding the time their schedule was part of it.

“When we were able to do it, it’s not just coming to Kolkata, it’s going to all of the major cities of India.”

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