We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
Abe Muriata / Girramay people / Australia b.1952 / Jawun (Basket) 2006 / Twined lawyer vine/ 62 x 42 x 25cm (with handle) / Purchased 2007. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Abe MuriataJawun (Basket) 2006
Not Currently on Display
Queensland’s most complex bio-region, the northern rainforests that stretch from Cairns south to Cardwell, and from the coast up into the hinterland ranges, saw the creation of one of the world’s most specialised and technically complex baskets: the magnificent bicornual jawun was used for fishing, leaching, gathering and even, with very large examples, for carrying infants, in dense linked settlements along the rainforest trails.
Abe Muriata is a strong and proud Rainforest Bama of the Girramay people. In the period of pre and early contact between colonists and the rainforest peoples of North and Far North Queensland, men were often the primary basket makers across various language groups, while in others the skill and duties of basket making were shared equally between men and women. Sometime after contact with European social norms, weaving and basketry became ‘women’s work’. Muriata follows in the footsteps of other men from the Girringun region who have continued to make these traditional forms and continues to assert that basket weaving is men’s business.