Design and Art Australia Online

Janine McAullay Bott is a Noongar fibre artist or 'bush sculptor’ with connections to country around Katanning, Wagin and Narrogin. The youngest of Cecil Percival McAullay and Rena McAullay’s (nee Farmer) seven children, she was born in Perth in 1951. McAullay Bott’s early adult years were spent working in the hospitality industry, and as a rider and trainer of horses for Polo, Equestrian and horse racing. She was also very involved in the world of sailing, spending time as both a yacht hostess and a crew sailor on racing yachts, and also becoming a certified scuba diver. In 1986 she moved to Hawaii and married. Her husband was a construction engineer who was often employed on resort building projects, and the couple lived in a number of different locations on the Hawaiian Islands. While in Hawaii, McAullay Bott taught herself to weave and began to create baskets using Palm fronds, Banyan vine and Banana Poka vine, exhibiting and selling her weavings in galleries and shops on the islands. In 1996 she moved to Los Angeles and continued to practise alongside Hopi Kachina (also spelt Katsina) doll carvers and Navajo rug weavers who exhibited and sold work at the annual Morongo Valley Indian Art Fair. At this time McAullay Bott sent her weavings back to galleries and gift shops in Hawaii where she had established a reputation.

In 1998 she returned to Perth to care for her elderly mother. Despite the fact that McAullay Bott separated from her husband in later years, her mother-in-law, Emily O’Neil Bott, a writer in Hawaii, remained a steadfast mentor throughout her artistic career, ensuring that she maintained her links with Hawaii. McAullay Bott’s son, Beau, has also been an unwavering supporter of her art.

When she returned to Perth, McAullay Bott added Mulberry wood, grape vine, Cocus palm fronds, Dracena and Philodendron plants and the Agave cactus to her repertoire of weaving materials. She also integrates non-natural fibres into some of her works to create varied colour and texture. However she predominantly works with the fronds of the Queen Palm Tree, and also finds use for the seedpod shells and skins and branches of the palm. McAullay Bott collects most of her materials on the Green Verg days which take place regularly in Perth, and also from neighbours who save their green waste for her. It is her exploration of subjects that diverge from the traditional preoccupations of weavers that has earned her the title 'bush sculptor’. Besides baskets, her practice has evolved to encompass variously shaped vessels such as sail boats, canoes and domestic objects such as chairs, brooms and bowls. She has also brought her particular weaving style to traditional Aboriginal objects and tools such as fish traps, dilly bags and bush safes, which are baskets lined with paper bark or leaves that are placed in a hole close to waterways for the short term preservation of food such as meat or fish. Native animals such as the monitor lizard (also known as the racehorse goanna), bandicoots, kangaroos and emus, as well as seals and horses are sculpted in life size with vigorous, expressive poses. One of her favourite weaves is a frill necked lizard that she made from a branch that had fallen from a palm tree in her mother’s garden. Her mother asked her to make a lizard – her totem – and McAullay Bott created the frills for the lizard’s neck from Philodendron leaves. Seedpod skins serve a similar purpose in some works, for instance in creating a smooth surface for the lower trunk of a seal.

McAullay Bott’s figurative works, usually created on a small scale, convey unique personalities and are imbued with a humanitarian spirit. They are often representations of specific people in her life, such as her mother or grandparents. All of her sculptures are distinguished by their roughly hewn, unruly appearance that is in contrast to the weaving styles practised by other Aboriginal weavers in Australia. Her works are realised through a process of roping and knotting the hardy fibres around wooden props (her weavings contain no stitching), and the irregular shapes and surfaces which result generate a sense of robust animation. Her sculptures often change shape because the fibres, which are woven when wet, dry out and tighten up over time. As she related to the author, people who own her weaves often tell her how the figures have subtly changed their appearance, though ultimately they acquire great strength and solidity as the weave becomes tightly packed due to the gradual shrinking of the drying fibres.

While there is a great deal of playfulness and humour in her approach, a serious intent underlies McAullay Bott’s art. All of her works seek to honour and bring to life Noongar traditions and knowledge; they are influenced by, and dedicated to her mother, who passed away in July 2007. Her methods have also been informed by Noongar matrilineal traditions. Nicholls notes that “Many techniques she employs – such as soaking cactus branches to render them pliable – were passed down from her mother and grandmother, who wove their own household items”(Nicholls 2005, p38). In working out the subjects of her weaves, she draws from the many stories shared by her mother about the old people, their experiences and their often amusing idiosyncrasies, as well as her own childhood experiences. The work Oldie, a six foot weave of a kangaroo, is dedicated to two important members of McAullay Bott’s family: her grandfather, Richard Farmer, and a big kangaroo that had turned up on her grandparents’ property in Katanning as a joey after its mother had been shot. Both Richard and the kangaroo were known as 'Oldie’ by the family. Throughout her childhood McAullay Bott and her siblings regularly stayed with her grandparents during school holidays. In a conversation with the author she related how she (aged six at the time) and her older siblings arrived at Katanning train station at 5am after a long “bone-rattling” train ride from Perth, and then lugged their suitcases for half an hour in the chilly early morning to her grandparents’ home. Their grandfather met them at the door with a handshake, and they found their grandmother Ada in the kitchen cooking toast on a fork by the fire. Upon arrival, the kids having tussled over the best spot before the fire, her grandmother announced “we need eggs for breakfast”, and the children were herded out into the cold again to visit the chook run. 'Oldie’ the kangaroo had made the chook run his home and “thought he was a rooster”, and was thus very protective of the chickens and their eggs. Grandma Ada fended off the towering 'Oldie’ with her bush broom while the kids ran between the squawking hens to grab the eggs, and Grandpa 'Oldie’ stood tall in the doorway laughing at the scene (pers. comm. 2009). In their shape, scale and characterisation, McAullay Bott’s sculptures bear the imprint of such memories and the emotions they evoke for her as she weaves.

In 2006 McAullay Bott began participating in a number of weaving workshops and public programs, which allowed her to share her knowledge about fibre arts and convey the vitality of Noongar traditions and culture. Workshops include the 'Cultural Strands/Woven Visions’public program staged by FORM Contemporary Craft and Design in Perth in 2006, and a collaborative workshop with Jillinbirri weavers at Artsource in Fremantle as part of 'Artopia’ (2007). In 2006, following a workshop she conducted in Shark Bay, McAullay Bott constructed a humpy out of a living tree. The humpy was subsequently incorporated into the landscape as Weaver’s Rest in the grounds of the Silver Chain Centre. She regularly conducts weaving workshops at schools, and has also been invited to conduct workshops at Curtin University in Perth.

Exploring new creative territory, in 2008 she collaborated with Seiji Konishi, a master weaver from the Kawashima Textile School in Kyoto, Japan, in the creation of a life-size Samurai costume. This collaboration was facilitated by Artitja Fine Art, a gallery McAullay Bott exhibited with in 'Desert Dreamings: earth + water' (2007) and 'Representations of Country’ (2008). Other exhibitions have included the 'Moorjditch Mar-Daa Art Award' (2005-08 inclusive) and 'Noongar Country: The Referendum’ at Bunbury Regional Art Galleries (2007). The latter, which was curated by Troy Bennell, recognised the forty year anniversary of the 1967 referendum, when Aboriginal affairs finally became the responsibility of the federal government, and Aboriginal people were to be counted in the census. McAullay Bott contributed the work Aboriginal Puppet Soldier to the show, a work that was dedicated to the many soldiers in her family who had served in the Australian armed forces but who, due to their lack of citizenship status, received little recognition for their service, nor benefited from the rights and privileges that non-Indigenous veterans could take for granted when they returned home. The work’s subtitle, No strings attached, conveys McAullay Bott’s purpose in creating this work. Her grandfather 'Oldie’ Richard Farmer and his brothers Lewis Farmer and Ken Farmer served in WWII, while his other brothers Larry Farmer and Augustus Peg Farmer had served in WWI, Augustus having been the first Aboriginal serviceman to be awarded a Military Medal. Both Larry and Augustus were killed in action and are buried in France. Aboriginal Puppet Soldier, which stands two feet high, is in the City of Bunbury Art Collection.

In 2009 McAullay Bott was commissioned to exhibit in 'Menagerie: Contemporary Indigenous Sculpture’, an Object Gallery and Australian Museum exhibition intended to tour nationally between 2009-10. In that year she was also awarded the Wandjuk Marika Three-Dimensional Memorial Award at the 26th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards for the work Dhalkatj – Bilby (2009). McAullay Bott’s work has been acquired by the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, the Kerry Stokes collection, the Western Australian Museum and the Holmes à Court collection.

Writers:

Fisher, Laura Note:

Date written:

2009

Last updated:

2011

Status:

peer-reviewed