Woven Stories

James Cook University anthropologists were delighted to have the opportunity in late 2022 to collaborate with the Cairns Regional Council in a significant exhibition of artefacts from Papua New Guinea.

The Woven Stories exhibition was the brainchild of Chris Stannard, Curator, Cairns Regional Council and Dr Maria Wronska-Friend, anthropologist and museum curator, who is an adjunct research fellow at The Cairns Institute. As a complement to the exciting Bilum Stories exhibition focusing on narratives about the continuing importance of string bags (bilums) among Papua New Guineans in Australia today, Maria and Chris had the idea of curating an exhibition of bilums from two different PNG artefact collections in James Cook University’s Material Culture Collection.

Most of the artefacts in the Woven Stories exhibition were from a collection known as the Telefomin collection. This collection was made by Maria in the Telefomin District, on the border of Sandaun (West Sepik) and Western Provinces, among a people commonly known as the Min people (including the Telefolmin, Mianmin, Atbalmin and Faiwolmin). What is unique and very valuable about the collection that Maria made is that it represents the only full, systematically organised inventory of material culture used by this group of people at a particular moment of time, in the late 1980s.

As it was to be a teaching collection for JCU anthropology and museum studies students, Maria also collected unfinished objects in various stages of manufacture, one of which was on display in Woven Stories – an incomplete tree-bark fibre and pandanus bilum from the Mianmin area. In addition, the exhibition featured several woven items from a collection made by Dr Laurie Bragge – a woven bridal Veil made by Iatmul people from Tambanum Village in the middle Sepik and a set of three woven fibre figures from the Pangia district in the Southern Highlands.

Professor Rosita Henry, who worked with Maria and Chris to curate the exhibition, presented a talk at the exhibition opened on Friday 4th November. On the 12th November, Rosita and Maria jointly did a curator’s talk and tour of the exhibition for a very interested group of visitors. The Exhibition was very well attended, drawing a large crowd of visitors from the community of Cairns and surrounds, as well as many tourists, as reflected in comments in the Visitors’ Book at the entrance to the Exhibition.

Attendees were treated to a brief rendition by PNG-born opera singer Heru Pinkasova for her Bilum Mamma show which featured at the Cairns Performing Arts Centre Studio on November 11. Those who attended echoed the need for this show to be given a larger platform and to be taken on the road around Australia.