WINNER - Muru Award
The judge, Julie Clarke-Jones, said: “I’m a Saltwater Freshwater Dharug Woman, so Virginia Keft's beautiful woven bats are really special for my people and significant to my mob: flying foxes are a very strong male totem. We can actually see so many of our family's personalities in these little fellas. I really love this piece, I love the colours, the work itself, the stitching and the weave. The colours – well, that's Dharug mob – we're all different shades and different colours, and we all have our uniqueness. Yet we're all combined and one. Congratulations, Virginia Keft, and thank you for entering HIDDEN with this beautiful work, we're so privileged to host it on our Country.”
The Colony, 2023
raffia, wire
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About the Artist
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Transcription
Bidderah Thurringa, my name is Virginia Keft and I’m a Muruwarri artist, researcher, and curator. My work entitled The Colony is a series of woven matjam—or Flying Fox. The matjam are woven to represent the tens of thousands of Grey-headed Flying Foxes Flying foxes that populate the native Australian trees and bushes around Dharawal, Dharug and Gadigal Country. I love to watch the bats as they move to and from their roosts where I live and work. Human activities and urban sprawl have displaced them from their natural habitats, but they are important pollinators and hold significance for Aboriginal peoples. At dusk they fill the sky, screeching as they pass over the rooftops. As the sun rises, the colony settles into the suburban gum trees to rest.
Matjam gather in family groups and fill the trees, noisily yarning with their mob. I am fascinated by the repetition of their forms when viewing them from my perspective on the ground and looking up at them in the trees - their droplet shapes hang in the hundreds; cloaked in their leathery wings, and furry little heads poking from within their wing cocoons.
Rookwood cemetery is a place of rich layered stories and The Colony of matjam seem perfectly at home nestled in the trees overlooking one of the oldest parts of the cemetery.
The central motif of matjam celebrates connection to place and community. As a Muruwarri artist, I weave sculptural bats using ancient techniques passed down from Elders. Weaving practice is a deeply personal expression of my connection to Culture, place and sense of belonging. For me the continuation of weaving practice not only emphasises that Indigenous Culture is living, but also celebrates my personal story as a Muruwarri woman and a contemporary artist engaging in new ways with themes of Country, language, place, and belonging.
Next time you pass by a colony of matjam, or see them flying overhead, consider the importance of this little animal. While you experience the woven colony in Rookwood consider the link they represent between family, land, sky, and cultural knowledge.