Lena Yarinkura

Lena Yarinkura (born 1961) is an Aboriginal Australian artist from the Rembarrnga and Kune language groups from Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. She is often credited for being the innovator of contemporary fibre art, producing multiple acclaimed works as well as creating a new school of fibre sculpture. She is a member of Maningrida Arts & Culture, an arts and crafts centre in Maningrida, Northern Territory.

Yarinkura was married to Kamarrang Bob Burruwal, who died in 2021. The couple worked together as a team, and most of the artworks created by either of them before Burruwal's death are collaborations.

Early life Yarinkura was born in 1961 in Buluhkarduru, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, into the Yirritja moiety of the Yolngu peoples. She was born into three clans, namely, the from the Rembarrnga, Kune, and Burnungku clans and as a result, she is part of the Gotjjan subsection. Yarinkura grew up surrounded and immersed in her rich culture and learned the important ancestral stories and cultural teachings from both her parents and Elders in the community.

When Yarinkura ventured into bark painting and began carving hollow log sculptures, this change in media and overall scale motivated a shift in her work and overall approach to fibre. She began to make traditional long yam sculptures from paperbark, bound by string (made from kurrajong tree bark), and painted them with distinctive red and white ochres. Yarinkura also made conscious efforts to reference some of the most important Aboriginal ancestral beings, such as the Rainbow Serpent (Ngalyod), in her works such as Sacred waterholes.

Not long afterwards, she bent the form once again, using nontraditional materials like bronze, tin, To illustrate the stories that belong to her and her husband, Yarinkura made paperbark and woven sculptures of a range of spirit figures, dogs, yawkyawks (mermaid-like spirits), and crocodiles, which had precedents in men's ceremonial objects rarely seen after the 1960s.

Yarinkura collaborated with Burruwal to make some of her acclaimed works, but after his death, Yolanda Rostron, her daughter, became her art partner. Yarinkura's generational knowledge, in particular the skills of basketry and pandanus-weaving learned from her mother Lena Djamarrayku, have been passed down to her daughter and, later, her granddaughter Philomena Kelly.

Urban Art Projects Yarinkura collaborated with the Urban Art Projects (UAP) in 1999 with Judy Watson. She developed a longterm relationship with the organisation, through a metal-casting workshop at Maningrida Arts and Culture Centre. UAP developed new casting methods based on Yarinkura's work, and together they later developed Seven Dogs, an art installation held at Brisbane Airport Skygate in 2010.

Artistic practice and impact Yarinkura and Burruwal's career was highly impactful in the artistic scene, inventing a whole new genre of art. Without their contributions, its likely that these new forms of fibre arts would never had come to fruition. As her works grew larger in scale and intricacy, Yarinkura became increasingly inspired to utilise the various traditional stories of her people to help narrate her works. It is of great importance that she passes down these skills to her children and grandchildren because Yarinkura knows one day she will be gone and wants them to take her place. Yarinkura's talent as a contemporary artist is recognised by many at the highest level, as her works are represented in almost every major Australian cultural institution and various significant private collections.

Materials Yarinkura typically chooses to use natural materials which she harvests and collects from her local environment in Bolkdjam. She used materials such as dayarr (pandanus), rulk (grass), warlpupurrunggu (bush turkey), nganarrngh (black cockatoo), feathers, and marnarr (red ochre), garbla (yellow ochre), gamununggu (white clay), and roerroe (black ashes).

Motifs and artworks

Yarinkura is featured as one of the nine prominent Aboriginal women artists whose works are showcased in an exhibition called Marking the Infinite, which highlights their contributions to contemporary Aboriginal art, as well as their roles as matriarchs in their communities. The other eight artists featured were Nonggirrnga Marawili, Wintjiya Napaltjarri, Yukultji Napangati, Angelina Pwerle, Carlene West, Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Gulumbu Yunupingu, and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu.

The 2020 Tarnanthi annual Indigenous art showcase at the Art Gallery of South Australia was subtitled Open Hands, and featured Ngalbenbe, an installation created by Yarinkura and her daughter Yolanda Rostron. This piece represents the important ancestral contribution in the cosmology of the people of Arnhem Land, specifically the Kune and Rembarrnga peoples. The series of sculptures are made from pandanus, paperbark, feathers, rocks, sand, earth pigments, and natural dyes. Yarinkura inherited the rights and responsibilities to depict the yawk yawk from her mother, making the yawk yawk one of her signatures. Her spider sculptures are not only a representation of the insect, but also act as a metaphor; the entanglement between the Dreaming and conscious world, as well as protecting one's country and land. The spider (karrh) is not inherently sacred and has no spiritual meaning, but is often used by artists in the region. Her web is both old and new, traditional and innovative, and regionally specific, but also universal due to Yarinkura's conscious effort to mediate between her world and that of the outside world. 1998 – Professional Development Grant, Australia Council for the Arts, Aboriginal Arts Unit

Personal life Yarinkura and her husband, Bob Burruwal (1952-2021), lived on an outstation named Bolkdjam, approximately south of Maningrida. 2009 – Ancestral Spirit Beings and Ceremonial Lorrkon, Gallery Gabreille Pizzi, Melbourne, VIC 2004 – Australian culture now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC 2004 – Maningrida Fibre Art, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London, UK 2003 – Maningrida Threads, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NSW 2001 – Out of the Mould: An exhibition of the first works in bronze and aluminum from Maningrida, Gallery Pizzi, Melbourne, VIC 2001 – National Sculpture Prize, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT 2000 – Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial: Frisson, Tamworth City Gallery, Tamworth, NSW 2000 – Biennale of Sydney 2000, various venues at various locations, Sydney, NSW 1999 – Spinifex Runner: A collection of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander fibre art, Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery, Campbelltown, NSW 1995 – Maningrida: The Language of Weaving, AETA Touring Exhibition throughout Australia and New Zealand 1995 - Australian National Heritage Art Award in Canberra (Yarinkura and Burruwal's second narrative sculpture group Modjarkki, Two Brothers and the Crocodile) 1989, 1994, 1997, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, NT