Lola greeno biography examples
Lola Greeno, born in on Cape Barren Island Tasmania, is an Aboriginal shell necklace maker, sculptor, installation and fibre artist. Greeno comes from a long line of shell stringers and her work is mostly made from shells, she sometimes combines traditional and contemporary stringing by using mutton bird features, gum nuts, echidna quills and kangaroo vertebrae. This stringing tradition is an opportunity for women to share stories and knowledge with younger generations and is passed down from mother to daughter. Greeno continues this tradition with her own grandchildren. Her necklaces tell the story of her Aboriginal heritage, visiting the beach to collect shells, while growing up on Cape Barren Island km from Tasmania Island.
As well as a body adornment, shell stringing played a significant role in cross cultural exchange during early European voyages to Van Diemen’s Land in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were used as gifts and as items to trade such as axes, clothing, glass beads and fish hooks. British colonisation had a devastating impact on the life of Aboriginal people, and although settlement threatened the tradition of shell stringing, survivors maintained their cultural practices. The shell stringing tradition is one of the few which remains and continues to evolve today.
Australian Curriculum Connections - Year 4 History
The diversity of Australia's first peoples and the long and continuous connection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples to Country/Place (land, sea, waterways and skies) (ACHASSK)
Australian Curriculum Connections - Year 5 History
The nature of convict or colonial presence, including the factors that influenced patterns of development, aspects of the daily life of the inhabitants (including Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islander Peoples) and how the environment changed (ACHASSK)
- Find Cape Barren Island on a map. What other Bass Strait Islands can you locate? What do you imagine the environment is
Senior Craftsman Rex Greeno and son Dean Greeno
Rex’s Reed Canoe Construction information Nov
When the early explorers arrived in Tasmania, they noted that there was 3 types of material used to construct canoes for example:
- Stringy Bark
- Swamp tea tree-paper bark
- Reeds
There is virtually no information recorded on the reed canoes. I discovered the canoes made from reeds or rushes had 3 to 5 hulls and were mainly used on the lagoons, small lakes and marsh areas along the eastern coast from Bicheno to Maria Island.
There is drawing of a canoe that measured 30 cm long.
I have already built canoes from swamp tea tree bark, the first one for years. As I am an experienced seaman in commercial fishing for about 40 years, Part of my sea experience came from helping to build a fishing boat.
I had a reasonable amount of marine experience to construct a reed canoe.
I was unable to collect the same reeds/rushes due lack of access to properties and river lands. I was able to get a suitable reed from the edge of the Tamar River.
The paper bark I had previously used was really fairly flexible and easy to manipulate the fibres. The reeds are very brittle once dried out this has forced me to change my technique, to suit the reeds enable me to construct the canoe as shown in my drawings. After 3 months of designing and getting used to the brittle reeds. I finally went ahead to create the canoe.
This is my explanation of my drawing that are done in sections, to show you.
Section 1:
Firstly, I select a curved stick about 2 cm in thickness then a small curved stick was nailed and glued to each end this formed the keel, bow and stern of the canoe.
Section 2:
Rings made from cane and secured by nailing them and securing them with plastic ties to the keel. These rings were of different diameters to shape the hull of the canoe.
Section 3:
Lengths of cane was then secured to each ring then secured to the bow and the stern, so either end of the canoe.
Se
Lola Greeno: Cultural Jewels
Cultural Jewels celebrates shell necklace maker, Lola Greeno's naming as the eighth Living Treasure in the Object: Australian Design Centre’s Masters of Australian Craft series. Greeno is the first Indigenous artist to be named in this series and, indeed, the show marks another significant step in recognition of cultural resilience: where intersections of innovation and tradition are important structural joists.
Greeno’s artwork and lifework are distinguished by a constant exchange between family and community. Fittingly, it is the discrete videography by Julie Gough that provides an enduring image of Greeno, knee-deep in a Flinders Island bay, harvesting by hand the tiny shellfish used for maireener necklaces. From another wall-mounted video, Greeno’s voice, describing the process of making (the rotting out, the slurridge, the stringing), is a reminder that these adornments are often made in and amongst a collegial atmosphere of conversation and teaching.
In response to changes in available resources, Greeno’s more recent works use new materials, or familiar materials in sturdier, contemporary manifestations. Then, the possum was a source of ligature on which to thread the shells. Now, the possum fur is reshaped into potential ceremonial adornment in a stack of possum-fur armlets. Some, as Greeno notes in the comprehensive monograph that accompanies the show, are almost unwearable neckpieces. They are sculptures for the body that deftly align warrener shells, scallop discs, casuarina apples and echidna quills. Their contradiction enhances their function as narrative-makers, co-created as the necklace takes form. The stringing is not only of materials, but a repeated pattern of experimentation within a cultural structure. How many patterns can be made out of a limited palette? And what is the solution to a palette that is diminishing? The preciousness of the maireener necklaces increases, for example,
- Lola Greeno: I am a senior
This paper was first published in MONASH UNIVERSITY EDITION # 5 DISCIPLINE.
PONRABBEL is pleased to have been asked by the author to post her paper online in order that it might be more accessible to more people. We are proud to be a part of Lola Greeno's story and to have been asked by her to share it with more people.
Lola's story is truly amazing and the contribution she has made to 'the Tasmanian story' should not be under estimated. In her own voice, in her own inimitable way, she speaks both for and with her community. She has shared her knowledge openly and freely. Tasmania is all the richer for her, and her life partner Rex, for being who they are, for doing what they do and have done quite quietly over quite a long time.
Lola's story is not only her story, it is in large part deeply rooted in her cultural reality, the stories that belong to 'The First Tasmanians' and the stories that give Tasmania its 'placedness'.
We have taken the opportunity to add some images and links to facilitate reader's further research. This opporunity hardly exists in HARDcopy publications and we trust that, if you take it, you will enjoy your explorations in CYBERspace.
&#;All of the work that we&#;ve done in the past 30 years has put a real value on our cultural practice and we have a real story to tell.&#;
Tasmanian Aboriginal Women continue to maintain their place in history, through their traditional shell necklace cultural practice. Today women acknowledge the significance of their cultural knowledge and skills, knowledge that is imbedded in their shell necklaces, in the making of stories, and through their traditional shell necklace cultural practice. Today women acknowledge the significance of their cultural knowledge and skills, knowledge which has been, and is being, handed down to future generations. During the past three decades Tasmanian Aboriginal women have organised shell necklace