Take 5

String figure prints by Yirrkala artists

In December 2021 FUMA acquired five prints from the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka print studio in Yirrkala, north-east Arnhem land. These soft-ground etchings were made by Yolŋu artists and depict string figures, known in Yolŋu as matjka. Matjka is a highly-developed Yolŋu cultural practice of using looped string on fingers, toes, and sometimes knees and teeth to make animal or object forms. In 1948 the anthropologist Frederick McCarthy collected and recorded string figures, working with Ngarrawu Mununggurr, a Djapu woman skilled in the art of matjka. 193 string figures were rendered two-dimensionally and mounted to boards; they are now in the collection of the Australian Museum in Sydney. The newly-acquired FUMA prints were the third series of etchings made as a result of the Yirrkala community’s reconnection with the collection.

The emphasis for the 2019 iteration of the project was to engage with a younger generation to become familiar and competent with this old Yolŋu skill. Artists Dhukumul Wanambi, Djätji Garrawurra, Siena Stubbs and Wanharrawurr Munuggurr were in their late teens when they produced their prints of bathi (string bag), miyapunu (turtle), gara (three-pronged fishing spear) in 2019. Senior artist and printmaker Marrnyula Munuŋgurr, who has been involved in previous iterations of the project, has rendered a biyay (goanna).

To make the prints, first string was made from the pounded and softened inner bark from the Darraŋgulk (Kurrajong) tree and the separated fibres twined on the thigh to make two-ply string. Each artist’s design was transferred from their hands to a cardboard support and secured down, before imprinting the design onto a prepared metal plate that had been treated with a soft-ground medium. When the plates were put into the acid bath the areas where the waxy medium had been disturbed became permanent markings. The etching plates were then covered with ink, with the etched marks being left clean, and run through the press to produce an image on paper of the fine textured detail of the bush string.

These five string figure prints are important additions to FUMA’s collection of works by Yolŋu artists which includes paintings, barks and works on paper. These works continue the ongoing reinterpretation of anthropological collections in contemporary Aboriginal art practice and will feature in teaching and learning within the museum in a multitude of disciplines.

Alice Clanachan
Collections Curator, Flinders University Museum of Art
Adelaide, Australia, 2022

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