Tears Flowing Down the Daly River — 14 July to 19 August 2023
Tears Flowing down the Daly River.
Artists: Kieren Karritpul, Patricia Marrfurra McTaggart (AM) and Marita Sambono
Curators: Kieren Karritpul and Cathy Laudenbach
Presented by The Cross Art Projects and Merrepen Art Centre
22 July to 19 August 2023
Opening Saturday 22 July 2023, 2 pm
With talks by artists Kieren Karritpul, Marita Sambono and co-curator Cathy Laudenbach (Manager, Merrepen Art Centre)
Tears Flowing Down the Daly River contributes to a decade of linked exhibitions on the theme of art, ecology and place, initiated by The Cross Art Projects and Merrepen Art Centre in Nauiyu.[1] Nauiyu is an Aboriginal township on the middle reaches of the Daly River, one of the world’s last wild rivers and one of Northern Australia’s few perennial rivers, fed by the wet season rain and groundwater aquifers. For millennia, the river’s fresh waters have interconnected art, culture and daily life. But climate catastrophe and pressure from industrial cotton growing, formerly prohibited on grazing land, are altering the liquid lines. Tributaries are dying. The wildlife is struggling. Tears are flowing. [2]
Renowned freshwater artists Kieren Karritpul, Patricia Marrfurra McTaggart (AM) and Marita Sambono show us the abundance, beauty and important food sources of the river’s narrow alluvial floodplains, billabongs, springs and swamps. Their distinctive artworks are “more than pretty pictures”.[3] The artists generously share longstanding Ngan’gi biocultural and ethnobiological knowledge and recent scientific knowledge of Country. Nauiyu’s traditional owners are the Malak-Malak, but nine inter-connected languages are spoken at the former Catholic Mission.4 The people of this place hold water to be a sacred and elemental source and symbol.
Polymath author of seven books, ethno-botanist, linguist and scholar Patricia Marrfurra McTaggart, is an acclaimed painter and weaver noted for her spectacular walipan/fish nets, using merrepen palm fibre (Livistonia or sand palm) coloured by root dyes.[5] Marrfurra’s Walipan won the 2022 Helen Lempriere scholarship, awarded at the annual Sculpture by the Sea in Sydney. She includes amongst her influences, “works such as my mother’s fishing net and bag; barks of Charles Mardigan (1926-1986) and Nym Bunduck (1904-1984); and the writings and photographs of William Edward Stanner who [in 1933] interviewed both my father and grandfather.”[6]
Kieren Karritpul is from this distinguished artistic lineage. His mother Patricia inspired him to focus on totemic life, sacred sites and stories. Karritpul and his mother are two of the few continuing speakers of endangered Ngen’giwumirri, a Ngan’gi dialect. He is a painter, award winning textile designer and printmaker—with this exhibition’s collagraphs being produced at a residency at Basil Hall’s printmaking studio near Canberra. Karritpul often paints painstakingly line-by-line to evoke and prompt a meditative focus, slowly transforming woven plant fibres into beautiful objects. His rich use of colour and repitition of line speaks fully of his respect for tradition. Images of fishtraps and dillybags, particularly his major piece Fishtrap With Hidden Text, show how the voice of tradition influences contemporary issues. Co-curator Cathy Laudenbach observes, “In Indigenous culture, totems make you who you are—they inform you and guide your life”.[7] Kieren Karritpul is also a multiple award-winning master textile printer and designer.
Marita Sambono’s traditional language is Ngan’gi’ kurrunggurr, and her acutely observed paintings show the complex tropical world and its rich bush tucker—fruits, sacred lotus (root tubers, pods and seeds), magpie geese, fish and turtles—all part of the seasonal almanac. She is also renowned for her iconic textile design and magic paintings of “Fog Dreaming”, depicting a seasonal fog that emerges from the river and slowly shape-shifts from place to place like a spirit. The ownership of this dreaming site is transferred within the artist’s kinship group, a family of artists and traditional knowledge custodians. Works such as these, along with Wangi (The Wind), show both the slow movement of the fog, the speed of wind, and how such elements can signal both spiritual comfort and potential danger. In each image, every droplet of water is clearly precious.
Modes of production on the Daly River continue to be fishing, hunting, dryland farming and foraging. The artists warn that in recent years billabong bounty has become less predictable. Aquatic life needs wet season flows and floods to thrive. Bush food is now hard to find and turtles, including the pig-nosed turtle, are getting bony with less flesh and fat. The exhibition asks us to see and understand what is going on: vast tracts of leased pastoral land have been cleared for cotton. Known as white gold, the cotton rush has made investor demand for land in the Northern Territory “insatiable”.[8] Each little ball of white lint adds to giant bales of dirty cotton. After harvest the land is wasted: dead and dusty to the horizon.
The Northern Territory has the weakest water laws and oversight in the country, hence there is inadequate data and huge knowledge gaps about water flow and replenishment of aquifers. There are no safe drinking water rules. Indeed, water is gifted to irrigators freely as a subsidy to agribusiness, while social, cultural and environmental costs are unidentified. Now one can simply apply for a “diversification permit” to swap from farming cows to genetically modified cotton.[9] Art and tourism are at the bottom of the bonanza calculus. Will the catastrophic, slow-motion ecological collapse of the Darling River (Paakantyi: Baaka or Barka) be copied on the Daly River catchment?
Marita Sambono, Coolamon 2, 2023, acrylic on linen, 74.5 x 49 cm (#10604)
Marita Sambono, Coolamon, 2023, acrylic on linen, 69 x 55 cm (#10582)
Marita Sambono, Fog Dreaming, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 130.5 x 88 cm (#10576)
Marita Sambono, Untitled, 2023, acrylic on paper, 49.9 x 69.7 cm
Kieren Karritpul, Fish Basket, 2023, collagraph, 2/20, 78.3 x 99 cm
Kieren Karritpul, Fishnet With Hidden Text, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 131 x 117.7 cm (#10564)
Kieren Karritpul, Two Floating Fish Traps, 2022, collagraph (30/30), 40 x 67.5 cm
Kieren Karritpul, Three Fish Traps, 2023, acrylic on linen, 51.3 x 81 cm (#10537)
Kieren Karritpul, Black and White Dilly Bag, 2023, acrylic on linen, 45 x 61.5 cm (#10536)
Kieren Karritpul, Sunmat, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 77.5 x 70.5 cm (#10553)
Kieren Karritpul, Untitled, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 61 x 50 cm (#10508)
Patricia McTaggart, String Game, 2022, collagraph, 1/20, 48.7 x 58.9 cm
Kieren Karritpul, Pig Nosed Turtle, 2022, collagraph, 9/20, 70.7 x 53.6 cm
Patricia McTaggart, Croc Skin, 2022, collagraph, 2/30, 70.7 x 53.1 cm
Marita Sambono, Wangi, 2022, collagraph, 20/30, 56 x 68.5 cm
Tears Flowing Down the Daly River, The Cross Art Projects, 2023. Installation view. Photo: Silversalt
Tears Flowing Down the Daly River, The Cross Art Projects, 2023. Installation view. Photo: Silversalt
Tears Flowing Down the Daly River, The Cross Art Projects, 2023. Installation view. Photo: Silversalt.
Tears Flowing Down the Daly River, The Cross Art Projects, 2023. Installation view. Photo: Silversalt
Tears Flowing Down the Daly River, The Cross Art Projects, 2023. Installation view. Photo: Silversalt.
Tears Flowing Down the Daly River, The Cross Art Projects, 2023. Installation view. Photo: Silversalt.
View Tears Flowing Down the Daly River. Left window: silk-screened textiles by Marita Sambono, ‘Fire’ and Kieren Karritoul, ‘Coolaman’ on silk. Right window Kieren Karritpul, Mermaids textile, silk.
Tears Flowing Down the Daly River, The Cross Art Projects, 2023. Installation view. Photo: Silversalt
People of the River
Anthropologist W.E.H Stanner observed in The Daly River Tribes, how “Ritual obligations were laid down by their Dreamtime ancestors which ensured that the land around the Daly would yield the products needed to sustain life.”[10] Three decades later, in 1968, Stanner’s famous Boyer lectures on ABC Radio, After the Dreaming, defined Australian race relations and consequences as, “a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale”. Stanner’s lectures on Australian colonial invasions insisted that frontier violence and the contest for resources are central to our settler history.
After the introduction of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, some traditional custodians took up pastoral leases. Historian Peter Forrest updated Stanner’s observations in The Spirit of the Daly (1989), describing a reasonal semblance of co-operation on the river: “Aboriginal people, floodplain graziers and small irrigators have worked together to keep the river and the wetlands alive”. Since 2019 however, industrial farming has vastly accelerated the damage and depletion of water resources, ecosystems and biodiversity, and sharpens ongoing Indigenous trauma and dislocation and the ability to pass on knowledge: the latest twist in this river story.
Dirty Cotton: And the River Ran Dry
The Northern Myth began with Federation and continues today. In the 1960s agricultural economist Bruce Davidson described the Northern Myth as a misplaced belief in the north’s capacity to accommodate vastly expanded agriculture and irrigation. Central to the Northern Myth claim, then and now, is that water is “wasted” without more economic development.
Lobbying continued behind closed doors. In 2015 the Commonwealth government released the latest White Paper on Developing Northern Australia which called for significant expansion of irrigation. Notably, the plan failed to incorporate environmental water reserves, known as the 80/20 principle, or that 80% is for environment and public good. This is the Water Allocation Planning Framework, with two separate zones in the Territory, Top End and Arid Zone (largely to supply Alice Springs with water). Top End rules (covering the wild rivers) are 80/20. In the Arid zone the reverse applies. These rules are the basis of establishing an “estimated sustainable yield”. Running out of water? Move the arid zone up north to serve private (as opposed to public) interest.
In 2018 the NT government lifted the ban on cotton, with first harvest on the Daly River occurring a year later. Many of the players connected to the collapse of the Darling River system now lead the northern cotton gold rush. Upriver from little Nauiyu, big players—such as Tipperary and Claravale stations—have cleared endangered Savannah ecosystems and tripled water allocation from already over-allocated aquifers. They now want further subsidy for a cotton gin. This is the “modern cotton” narrative.
In the NT, major water licenses are “free” and upscaling water allocations is a smooth and opaque process. There is almost no monitoring. Most aquifers don’t have management plans and, as cotton is heavily reliant on chemicals (nitrogen fertilizer and herbicides), it is unlikely there will be monitoring of contamination.[11] Growers hustle for water from the river and over-allocated aquifers upstream near Katherine. Proposed changes to pastoral lease legislation will potentially allow 45% of land-mass to be cotton plantations. About 25 stations have indicated interest in the cotton bonanza.[12]
In 2022, the government adopted “burn the Amazon” regulations and relaxed approval times for land clearing permits from six months to six weeks. Thousands of hectares of bushland were bulldozed without permission knowing approval would be retrospective.[13] However, a recent Tree Ring climate study by UNSW scientists told of a much drier past over 600 years, arguing, “Climate models suggest monsoon rain, the life-blood of the river system, will become more variable”.[14] Meanwhile, a recent Australia Institute report questioned the economic benefits of cotton to the Territory.[15]
The Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission Report (2019) offers a scathing assessment of many governmental decisions and processes that led to the disaster. The report found the management and board of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority had acted negligently and unlawfully. The South Australian Report was ignored.16 Indigenous water justice is even more elusive. Traditional ownership of land (Native Title) was only recognised by the Australian High Court in 1992, overturning the mythic doctrine of Terra Nullius. Unhappily, Native Title legal rights to water remains almost non-existent (Aqua Nullius), comprising less than 0.01% of water entitlements.
There is a bigger picture. The Daly’s wild partner is the Roper River. The pair define the ‘Big Rivers region’ and form the Katherine-Daly-Roper system. The Roper River’s surface water catchments cover most of the Beetaloo region and groundwater discharge supports perennial flows in the Roper, Flora and Daly Rivers, plus streams and springs in the Elsey National Park and spectacular Nitmiluk Gorge near Katherine—all major tourist destinations.
In May 2023, the NT government green-lit fracking in the Beetaloo Basin (subject to investigating lacuna highlighted in the Pepper Inquiry)[17], claiming that “environmental risks could be safely managed”. A broad range of voices has swiftly challenged “safe management” claims and condemned the government’s final call on fracking in the Beetaloo.
Despite our abundance of renewable resources, political focus still facilitates unsustainable, extractive cotton and gas industries in the north. They call it a “post-Covid reconstruction plan”. But the turtles and aquifer stygofauna will not appreciate the ironic deceit. In response, these art works plead for Indigenous rights and knowledge to be recognized and included in economic and political decision-making. People of the river: a voice to be heard and a central place at the table.
— Jo Holder
Director, The Cross Art Project
Tears Flowing down the Daly River is a companion exhibition to The Mighty Daly River. Watch! Warning! Alert! at Godinymayin Yijard Rivers Arts and Culture Centre, Katherine (both 2023), curated by Merrepen Arts.
Notes
- The Cross Art Projects exhibition series: Following Lines: Art and Ecology from Merrepen, 2013. Essay: ‘Following Lines’ by curator Marie Falcinella. Yerr Wetimbi yi Yerr Marrgu / Old Way & New Way, Kieren Karritpul & Patricia Marrfurra, 2019.
- NT Pastoral Land Act 1992: In the Territory 45% of land is leased only to be used for cattle and not cropped. The Dirty Cotton lie is that ‘cotton is pastoral improvement’—ie: cotton will feed cows thus a social licence is not needed.
- Djambawa Marawilli, artist and chair of ANKA, cited in Catriona Moore, ‘Not just a pretty picture: Art as ecological communication’, Chapter: Water, Wind, Art and Debate, Sydney University Press, 2007.
- Ngan’gi is an abbreviated term to describe speakers of Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri languages. Nauiyu is a former Catholic Mission (1955-1977). From appoximately 1886 until closing in 1898 it was known as Uniya Mission (at several sites), before it was reopened as Nauiyu—again run by Jesuits from Rapid Creek, Darwin.
- See Ngan’gi Plants and Animals, 2014 by Glenn Wightman and Patricia Marrfurra McTaggart.
- Patricia Marrfurra McTaggart interviewed by Jarred Cross. National Indigenous Times, 31 October 2022.
- Kieren Karritpul, Painting My Culture. Painting my Country, 2022. Essay by Cathy Laudenbach. Godinymayin Yijard Rivers Arts & Culture Centre, Katherine
- Weekly Times, Annual Survey, ‘Who Owns What Station’ (7 May 2022 + 16 May 2023): Weekly Times stated land demand in NT “insatiable”.
- GM cotton was first grown in Australia in 1996. Over 99.5% of cotton grown in Australia now is genetically modified. See: https://www.ogtr.gov.au/resources/publications/genetically-modified-gm-cotton-australia.
- W.E.H Stanner studied the Mulluk Mulluk, Madngella and Nangiameri tribes on the Daly River and the MarithaIel (or Berinken) from the Fitzmaurice River. See, ‘The Daly River Tribes. A report of fieldwork in Northern Australia’, Oceania, Vol III, No 4, June 1933 and subsequent publications.
- One of the few studies on surface water harvesting and Daly River is by Wayne Erskine and Peter Jolly, 2003. The study concluded no water should be taken from floodplains. Failure to monitor see: Review of the Singleton Horticulture Project’s water entitlement provision costs, benefits and employment impacts, Centre for Markets, Values and Inclusion, University of South Australia, 2023. Growers are demanding up to 5.2 billion litres a year from acquifers near Katherine. NT Farmers, 2021.
- See: A Fork in the River: The consequences of a major new cotton industry in the Northern Territory, p8. Independent research paper commissioned by Territory Rivers: Keep ‘em Flowing, July 2022. See table on pg.8 for a list of stations interested in growing cotton.
- Environmental Justice Australia lawyer Laura Dreyfus says data shows land clearing in the NT rose roughly 300% between 2018 to 2021. Following the report, Turning a blind eye to cotton and land clearing in the NT (ABC TV,12 Jan 2023), the Federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) said it would investigate the land clearing allegations as “any approval of national environmental significance requires approval under Australia’s national environmental laws, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.”
- UNSW Tree Ring study, “Industry lines up to take water from a wild Top End river; trees tell a story of a much drier past”, The Conversation, 3 March 2022.
- See https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/no-economic-benefit-from-nt-cotton-submission/. ‘No Economic Benefit From Cotton’, 10 January 2023. ATO data shows major cotton growers pay little to no tax. The industry employs just 0.4% of the agricultural workforce.
- The Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) is used to steal gigalitres of water for big irrigators (predominantly cotton) and for gas and coal. See: South Australia, Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission, Report (2019). Commissioner Bret Walker SC, made 44 recommendations to overhaul the 2012 plan to help restore its lakes, wetlands and fish stocks. See also the gothic tale of systemic water failure and greed: Richard Beasley, Dead in the Water, 2020.
- Scientific Inquiry Into Hydraulic Fracturing in the Northern Territory, 2019. See https://frackinginquiry.nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/494286/Complete-Final-Report_Web.pdf
Daly River is a Sacred Place, video by Territory Rivers Keep ‘em Flowing, 2023
About the Artists
Marita Sambono was born in 1968 and lives and works in Nauiyu, Daly River. Her traditional language is Ngan’gi’ kurrunggurr an ancient language now only spoken by about 100 people in the Daly River region. Marita is a mother and grandmother as well as an artist. She works in numerous art mediums including painting, print making and textile design. Her work is included in many of Australia’s leading art institutions including the National Gallery and her textile designs are widely collected. She recently had work acquired by the Batchelor Institute in the Northern Territory and has a painting in the 2023 Salon des Refusés in Darwin in August.
Kieren Karritpul was born in 1994 and lives and works in Nauiyu, Daly River. Northern Territory. His traditional language is Ngen’gi wumirri—an ancient language now only spoken by about 30 people around the Daly River region. Kieren is employed full time as a senior arts worker at Merrepen Arts. He has been an artist all his life following his maternal family. Kieren has his work included in many of Australia’s leading art institutions including the National Gallery. He won the 2014 31st Telstra NATSIAA Awards Darwin Youth Award (now ‘Emerging Award’) and the NIFA Textile artist of the year in 2014. Currently Kieren is a 2023 Finalist Fremantle Print Prize Perth, a 2023 Finalist in the Hadley Prize in Hobart and a 2023 Finalist in the Sulman Prize, AGNSW.
Patricia Marrfurra McTaggart (AM) was born in 1959 and lives and works in Nauiyu, Daly River, NT. Patricia is an artist, linguist, teacher, author of seven books and Order of Australia recipient—acknowledging her preservation of language and culture. As an artist she paints draws, weaves and designs fabric. In her weaving she collects the colour for dying from roots in the area then using secret methods that are sometimes experimental. She boils the colour in huge vats. She collects merrepen and pandanus and dyes the fibres before weaving. In 2022 she was awarded the Helen Lempriere award for Australian Women artists for her woven sculptural fish baskets and was one of the main exhibition artists at Bondi Sculpture by the Sea.
Links
Merrepen Arts – http://www.merrepenarts.com.au/
ANKA – https://anka.org.au/merrepen-arts
Environment Centre NT – http://ecnt.org.au/
Territory Rivers, Keep ‘em Flowing – https://territoryrivers.org.au
Resources: Daly River / Top End Environment
ABC 730 Report, 12 Jan 2023: ‘Turning a blind eye’ to cotton and land clearing in the NT: By Roxanne Fitzgerald and Hannah Meagher. At Territory Rivers – https://territoryrivers.org.au/turning-a-blind-eye-to-cotton-and-land-clearing-in-the-nt-abc-730/
Territory Rivers Report, A Fork in the River: the consequences of a major new cotton industry in the Northern Territory, 2023.
For over two decades, scientists and elders in the Northern Territory’s Daly River region have been recording the traditional knowledge of the Ngen’giwumirri and Ngan’gikurunggurr people. https://www.abc.net.au/education/abc-news-race-against-time-preserving-ngangi-bush-lore/14004334
About Merrepen Arts
Merrepen Art Centre was founded in 1986 by the Nauiyu (Daly River) community. The centre has grown from being a women’s centre where art and ecology was the focus to an internationally known art centre. The name Merrepen (Livistonia Palm) comes from the local sand palm and was chosen as a mark of respect for the older women who use Merrepen fibres to make dillybags and baskets. The distinctive style of Merrepen artists draws inspiration from the tropical wetlands, plants and animals of a unique perennial Daly River.
Acknowledgements
To Merrepen Arts—especially co-curators Dr Cathy Laudenbach and Kieren Karritpul (co-curators at Merrepen Arts) and artists Patricia Marrfurra McTaggart (AM) and Marita Sambono. To Cross Art colleague Catriona Moore and Sydney University curatorial intern Amy Thomson de Zylva. To researchers at Environment Centre NT, Darwin (Jessica Black) and Territory Rivers Keep ‘em Flowing (Jason Fowler). The Cross Art Projects: Belle Blau, Simon Blau, Phillip Boulten, Susan Gilligan.
Acknowledgement of Country
Merrepen Arts, Culture and Language Art Centre acknowledges the Malak-Maluk people as the traditional owners of the land where Merrepen is situated. The Cross Art Projects acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We recognise their continuing connection to land, place, waters and community.