Baz Ruddick & Jessica Naunton, Girringun artists’ work goes global as iconic fire-starter sparks ancient skills revival, ABC News, 2 November 2024
For countless generations, a unique, body-shaped tool with holes for eyes has been keeping Indigenous communities warm on chilly nights in the rainforests of northern Queensland.
Now the ancient fire-starter — known as Bagu — is generating heat of a different kind after being introduced to the international art world, and featuring prominently as an installation on the foreshore at Cardwell, north of Townsville.
With the ocean backdrop, the giant sculptures have become popular with tourists posing beside them.
“People come up and say, ‘Oh look at these little dolls’,” Girramay artist Nephi Denham says.
“You kind of have a laugh and you go, ‘No’.”
The Bagu represents the unique craft of nine traditional owner groups from the Hinchinbrook region.
Traditionally, the tools were made from boogadilla — a soft milky pine wood — perfect for starting fires.
Today, the figures that appear in galleries across the country and overseas are mostly made from elaborately decorated clay.
To start a fire, the original wooden Bagu was drilled with a Jiman, a long, cylindrical piece of wood from mudja, hardwood from a guava tree.
The friction of the Jiman would create a coal that could be then used to make a full fire.
The tool and other traditional artefacts are now made at the Girringun Art Centre, which represents about 30 Indigenous artists.
Girringun manager Whitney Casey, a Mandubarra woman, said the centre began as a way to get Indigenous people “back on the traditional tools”.
“It only just started with a small number of weavers,” she said.
The gallery has now commercialised and expanded its Bagu production as its reputation has soared around the country and overseas.
“When they [people] see Girringun they automatically think of the fire tool. It’s the ceramic,” she said.
“Everyone is buying a piece of this artwork.”
Evolution of art
The making and use of Bagu was originally reserved for men but, after a meeting among elders several years ago, it was decided to allow women to also create the artefact and for it to be made in a more contemporary form.
“They’ve kind of still maintained that same structure of the traditional tool and they still have the tribal motifs that connect them to culture,” he said.
“But over the years I’ve seen flowers painted on them, Spiderman painting on them — just personalities in the way they choose their colour to create them, bringing them out from the traditional colour into a more creative vibe.”
Mr Denham, who has held Bagu workshops in most Australian states, said the unique object had also been included in Aboriginal art showcases overseas.
In 2016, 10 giant Bagu were installed outside Monaco’s Oceanographic Museum as part of an exhibition about marine conservation, which highlighted Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artworks.
Mr Denham said when most people thought about Indigenous art they pictured dot paintings from the Northern Territory.
But the distinctive shape and individual personalities of the modern Bagu sculptures had attracted buyers, both locally and internationally, who were interested in different styles of Aboriginal art.
“Some people come to our art centre and ask for dot paintings and we go, ‘No, we don’t do them — we respect them, but that is their painting’,” he said.
Reigniting ancient skills
Beyond the Bagu, the Girringun Art Centre has become a place where community elders have started to revive forgotten skills.
Girramay man Abe Muriata said his own journey with traditional arts started when he realised skills had been lost in his community.
“We had dignitaries coming to our community … I’ve asked some of our old people to make some sort of basket for them. They threw some together and it was not the best,” he said.
“I was really disappointed in what we gave those dignitaries because I knew that we can make really good baskets.
“The traditional basket that comes from here is such an exquisite artefact.”
Mr Muriata said he made it his mission to revive the lost craft of making Jawan, a traditional basket, and Wungarr, a traditional eel trap.
“I don’t think our old people saw it as art. It was an everyday thing,” he said.
Weaving old ways into new stories
Mr Muriata remembers gathering lawyer cane for his grandparents and other elders to use to make baskets in the 1960s, when he was a boy.
Now artists use a variety of contemporary materials — such as plastic — to weave.
“I had a basic idea but when I started weaving it I knew there was a lot of technique and knowledge missing to achieve the real artefact stuff — the artisan stuff,” he said.
Seeing traditionally woven baskets on display at the Queensland Museum/Kurilpa inspired Mr Muriata to try to perfect the technique, by visually deconstructing the form.
He is determined to teach others how to create the beautiful, sturdy baskets his people once made, so the skills are not lost forever.
Baskets had many uses in the past, including being used for processing food, for ceremonial purposes, for carrying babies and for holding sacred objects.
“I hope to bring it back to its former glory where you can go to a museum and you wouldn’t know that difference if it was made yesterday,” he said.
“There’s such a long process in making a basket.”
From workshop to the world
Mr Muriata’s weaving has taken him around the world.
In 2015, he met King Charles, who was then the Prince of Wales, when the British Museum commissioned him to make a basked for an exhibition in London.
“To get to this final point it took years. Some of my old ones are rubbish compared to what I should be doing,” he said.
“Once you know the technique and the ancient knowledge behind it, you can only expect something of the best quality.
“I was told it is the only trade Aboriginals ever had that they learned as a kid.”
Ms Casey said the centre aimed to connect elders with the younger generation so traditional skills could be passed down.
“We don’t just provide a safe space, we provide some professional development for the artists,” she said.
“We try and help them on their pathway to create what they love doing.
“With these artworks, the artists are able to tell stories about how they grew up, about their traditions, and pass it on to the younger generation.”
Stoking the ‘fire’ within
Elder Philip Denham said he only started making art at the age of 60 following heart surgery because he was no longer able to do strenuous work outside.
“So I started something that was more natural and calm and where I can have my space and time to myself,” he said.
“Back then — young, wild and free — it was all ‘work hard and party hard’. But then I had the bypass and I thought I’d better slow up.”
Mr Denham Snr said he was still learning how to improve his art and hoped that it would lead him to a deeper understanding of his culture.
“They often say that there is a little man inside [the Bagu] that creates the fire and if you muck around with him, a fire will show you its power,” he said.
