Fat Quarter – Body Painting II – Anawari Mitchell

• Composition: Classic Cotton – organic (more info at bottom)
• Dimensions: 50 x 70 cm (19.7 x 27.5 inches)
• Weight of base cloth: 140 gsm
• The artist is paid royalties for every metre printed
• Produced by Flying Fox Fabrics under license in collaboration with Papulankutja Artists
• Tag with story details supplied (see photo)

Title: Women’s Body Painting

Women’s ceremonial business is expressed through song, dance and mark making. This is how it has always been done, this is how the ancestors taught us.

This painting depicts the body painting designs applied to women’s breasts and limbs prior to ceremonies.

The linear patterns follow the curve lines of the women’s the breasts. The many lines represent the movement of the women as they dance during ceremony. After smearing their bodies with animal fat, they trace these designs onto their breasts, arms and thighs with ochres and charcoal singing as each woman takes turns to be ‘painted up’.

The ceremonial songs relate to Tjukurpa and stories of ancestral travel, plants, animals, landscape and the forces of nature.

About the artist:

Anawari grew up at the Warburton Mission. She was manager of the Blackstone Women’s Centre where they made e-dyed t-shirts, ba k, lino and silk-screen prints, spinifex paper and jewellery.

Anawari par cipated in the first tjanpi (grass) weaving workshop at Papulankutja (Blackstone) in 1995.

Anawari currently works for Ngaanyatjarra Land and Culture at Papulankutja. Her grandmothers country is Kuru Ala, a very important site for the Seven Sisters story which she paints. She paints stories of when the sisters travelled and camped at Kulyuru east of Blackstone and Kuru Ala which is a sacred women’s’ ceremonial site where teenage girls are taught to become young women.

Anawari’s family, the women of the family, have custodianship over some very special dreaming places.
Papulankutja Artists is a community-based, not-for-profit Aboriginal Corporation governed by a committee of elected members.

It evolved out of the Women’s Centre where painting had been encouraged as an activity for both men and women since the mid 1980s. With the Aboriginal art market taking off it became necessary to establish a legal framework to protect the artists and their entitlements. Papulankutja Artists was born in 2003 and a year later registered as an Aboriginal Corporation with the members governing the art centre. After five year struggling to find a home Papulankutja Artists moved into a purpose built art centre in 2009. The art centre also works with artists in Mantamaru (Jameson), a community 75kms to the west.

The fabric: Classic Cotton is made from organic yarn and woven in a satin finish. The fabric has a smooth surface with a sheen across it and a bright white point making it an excellent fabric for printing. Classic Cotton is a versatile fabric that produces a soft hand feel and gentle drape. Perfect for all types of clothing, accessories and selected soft furnishings.

Printed by: Next State Print in Melbourne, Australia

Fabric care instructions:
Gentle cold wash. Do not bleach, warm rinse well, do not tumble dry, iron, dry cleanable (P).