Remote art gallery Nagula Jarndu exhibits wedding collection at 2024 Country to Couture
From Broome to brides: Here’s how a remote women’s art centre is looking to redesign the modern Australian wedding traditions. See the 160+ gallery from this year’s Country to Couture.
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Rising from red sand and saltwater country from a remote West Australian town is a very different vision of a modern Australian bride, splashed with colour and carrying the stories of her Yawuru home as she walks down the aisle.
Broome-based women’s artist collective Nagula Jarndu capped off this year’s Country to Couture runway show on Tuesday with a powerful collection of dresses and suits that imposed Indigenous women’s stories onto the blank canvas of the white wedding dress.
The remote art centre was one of 20 collections showcased as part of the premier Indigenous fashion event on Larrakia Country as part of the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair.
The optimistic and joyful collection allowed artists to play with the two often conflicting traditions — the pristine whites of a wedding dress and their own proud Blak culture.
Nagula Jarndu design manager Eunice Yu said the theme of the collection, Gujarra Yangarrjin (two coming together), reflected not only the union of marriage, but of the ideas and culture of the women of the remote art centre with their tailors and the contemporary fashion world.
“All the outfits are bold statements about how you can shift your thinking about what you can wear to a union between two people,” Ms Yu said.
“It resonated with us.
“Coming together is our theme.”
Ms Yu said this was the message “our mother’s generation” hoped to foster when establishing the centre in the 1980s.
“It started as a space for women to come and to continue cultural practice in some way and recording language,” she said.
“Its their legacy that we’re carrying out on Country.”
Starting with textiles for homewares, tablecloths and cushions, Ms Yu said in the past few years artists had set their ambitions on garments and even haute couture fashion culminating in this year’s runway collection.
Ms Yu said each piece was the reflection of the artists’ take on the traditional wedding dress, playing with patterns, colours, and design to blend in their own culture and stories.
But she said one of final dresses that truly reflected the spirit of unity of their collection was a giant 5kg skirt combining the designs of all the Nagula Jarndu artists.
“The last piece is a combination of all the artists prints and it’s a layered skirt with lots and lots of silk and tulle,” she said.
With a laugh Ms Yu recounted how she crammed the hefty pile of silk and lace into the freight box in Broome ahead of its 1870km journey to the high fashion runway.
Dena Gower, a Noongar woman from south-west Western Australia, said she found her artistic voice through fashion and design with Nagula Jarndu, transforming her own culture and stories under the guidance of the Yawuru women.
The two-time Country to Couture designer’s swan dress and suit were the first pieces shown in the wedding runway collection, featuring alongside designs by her daughter and other First Nation’s women.
“It’s really special when you’re able to do your designs around Country, because Country belongs to us,” she said.
“My first design was the joolgie (Freshwater Crayfish) … It was special to me, because when I lived on the reserve with my Mum, Dad and grandparents, we would just go down to the creek and catch the joolies and watch them swimming in that clear freshwater.
“From that little joolgie the ladies really taught me how to embrace your culture — because we can now. We can embrace our history.”
Ms Gower said through fashion her two-dimensional design had come alive, flickering through her life through random encounters with other women wearing her designs.
“With my art I want to have things that are fun, and meaningful,” she said.
“I didn’t know that it would end up where it is at the moment — it’s amazing.”
Watching the models walk under the bright lights of the Darwin runway, the Nagula Jarndu watched as the Indigenous models shared their designs and stories to a sold-out crowd of 900 people.
It’s a world away from the weddings on the beaches of Broome that these dresses were inspired by, with Ms Yu revealing local brides had already requested these outfits for their own special day.
IN PICTURES: Country to Couture 2024
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Originally published as Remote art gallery Nagula Jarndu exhibits wedding collection at 2024 Country to Couture
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