Tiwi Textiles

Tiwi Textiles: Design, Making, Process tells the story of the innovative Tiwi Design centre on Bathurst Island in northern Australia, dedicated to the production of hand-printed fabrics featuring Indigenous designs, from the 1970s to today. Written by early art coordinator Diana Wood Conroy with oral testimony from senior Tiwi artist Bede Tungutalum, who established Tiwi Design in 1969 with fellow designer Giovanni Tipungwuti, the book traces the beginnings of the centre, and its subsequent place in the Tiwi community and Australian Indigenous culture more broadly.

Bringing together many voices and images, especially those of little-known older artists of Paru and Wurrumiyanga (formerly Nguiu) on the Tiwi Islands and from the Indigenous literature, Tiwi Textiles features profiles of Tiwi artists, accounts of the development of new design processes, insights into Tiwi culture and language, and personal reflections on the significance of Tiwi Design, which is still proudly operating today.

‘Tiwi Textiles is a unique historical document, a formidable vindication of the accomplishments of great Indigenous artists, and an account of a missing chapter in world art history. The book is a wonderful chronicle of a vital and fertile period for Tiwi practice in the emergence of contemporary Indigenous art. But it is also a charter for the future.’ – Nicholas Thomas FBA FAHA Director, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge

Author Biography

Diana Wood Conroy is an artist and scholar. Her research interests combine contemporary visual cultures with the archaeology of fresco and textiles in Cyprus in many publications, most recently in The Handbook of Textile Culture (with Janis Jefferies and Hazel Clark, in 2018) and in Weaving Culture in Europe (published in Athens, Greece, 2017). Her artwork in tapestry and drawing is held in national and international collections. She is Emeritus Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Bede Tungutalum Ampuruwaiuah, Tuuntulumi, Tiwi people, was born in 1952 at Wurrumiyanga (Nguiu), Bathurst Island, northern Australia. His father, well-known sculptor Gabriel Tungutalum, taught him to carve and paint traditional designs, as well as ceremonial stories, songs and dances. Bede Tungutalum works in a wide range of mediums, including carved and painted wooden sculpture, lino and textile prints, woodblocks, etchings and lithographs. His work is held in most national galleries in Australia. In 2020 Bede received the Special Recognition prize at the inaugural National Indigenous Fashion Awards, recognising 50 years in textiles.