Pandanus is found all over the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, and was the inspiration by local artist Osmond Kantilla for the design of a textile by the same name produced by Willie Weston.
Willie Weston works with Indigenous artists to create textiles for contemporary environments. They engage artists from Indigenous owned arts centres throughout some of the most remote parts of Australia.
Their collaboration with our friends Tait integrates the work of Indigenous artists with Tait's iconic Australian-designed and manufactured outdoor furniture pieces.
PANDANUS
Pandanus in the Tiwi Collection is part of Tait’s textile range called Woven Skies.
Printed on high-performance outdoor fabrics, the designs celebrate stories of connections to native plant life and seasonal changes, and feature across Tait’s relaxed lounging and dining families.
OSMOND KANTILLA
The designer Osmond Kantilla is a master screen printer. His country is Wurruranku and his skin group is Marntimapila (Stone). Kantilla has been selected for group exhibitions across Australia and internationally.
His work is held in numerous public collections, including the National Museum of Australia, the Powerhouse Museum, National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia.
TIWI DESIGN
Kantilla is part of an indigenous-owned art centre, Tiwi Design, on Bathurst Island, one of the two main islands that make up Tiwi Islands surrounded by the azure waters of the Arafura Sea. The Tiwi people are culturally and linguistically distinct form their near neighbours in Arnhem Land, and this is also true of their artistic traditions.
SUGARBAG DREAMING
‘Sugarbag Dreaming’ by Rosie Ngwarraye Ross celebrates the honey made by native bees in central and northern Australia, colloquially named ‘sugarbag’. Sugarbag also refers to sweet nectar from the yellow flowers of the ‘tarrkarr’ tree, found around Rosie’s community of Ampilatwatja, approximately 300 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs.
ROSIE NGWARRAYE ROSS
Rosie Ngwarraye Ross was born in 1951 near Amaroo Station, Northern Territory. Her skin group is Ngwarraye.
In her paintings Ross depicts the bush medicine plants and wildflowers from around her country.
She has a bold expressive style and often omits the sky from her compositions, combining both aerial and frontal views. Ross has exhibited widely, including as part of Fragrant Lands: Exhibition of Australian and Chinese Indigenous Art, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute – touring to Shanghai, China (2014), at Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne (2014) and at Booker-Lowe Gallery, Texas, USA (2015).
ARTISTS OF AMPILATWATJA
The Ampilatwatja community is approximately 300 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs in Central Australia (Northern Territory). It is home to the Alyawarr people, whose language is also Alyawarr. The area has a long and chequered pastoral history, and the Alyawarr people use their distinctive art to express their connection to, and traditional knowledge of, their ancestral lands.
Rosie’s Sugarbag Dreaming was developed in partnership with Artists of Ampilatwatja, an Indigenous owned and operated art centre in the community.
RAINBOWS
‘Rainbows’ by April Jones represents the advent of the dry season in the Kimberley region of northern Western Australia, depicting the colourful arcs seen in the sky towards the end of the wet season. The design’s origins as a woodblock print can be seen in the textural nature of the rainbow motifs.
APRIL JONES
April Jones spent many years teaching in Port Hedland, Broome and Fitzroy Crossing before arriving at the Marninwarntikura Women’s Resource Centre, wanting to learn how to sew. Seven years later she began working with Marnin Studio, creating block and screen prints of local bush tucker, flora and fauna.
FITZROY CROSSING
In the heart of the Kimberley in North Western Australia and surrounded by the flood plains of the Fitzroy River is the community of Fitzroy Crossing. The Marninwarntikura Women’s Resource Centre is a community hub for the Bunuba, Gooniyandi, Wankatjunka, Walmajarri and Nykina women in the area, and Marnin Studio is its social enterprise arm. Rainbows was developed in partnership with Marnin Studio.
TAIT & WILLIE WESTON
With growing momentum around the importance of biophilic design (better connecting people and nature through design), Tait's Woven Skies enhances outdoor living with relaxed, informal, and low- maintenance outdoor lounging and dining.
Each Willie Weston fabric in the Woven Skies range, faithfully reproduces the artist’s hand, with only minimal interventions made in order to adapt artworks into repeating designs and develop colourways. As a result, connections to country are evidenced in each design, retaining their inherently hand-produced, organic nature.
Willie Weston’s outdoor fabric prints exhibit some of the highest-performing attributes available to an exterior-grade fabric including a 100% solution-dyed Polyester composition; excellent abrasion resistance at 100,000+ Martindale rubs; a water and oil repellent Teflon® finish; UV, mould, stain, chlorine and salt resistance; and 95% colourfastness.
EXPLORE TAIT
Designcraft acknowledges the Ngunnawal people, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which Designcraft stands today and pay our respects to their Elders past and present.
We also extend that respect to all past, present and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of this nation and recognise their continuous connection to country, community and culture.