Exhibitions
taypani milaythina-tu: Return to Country | Bianca Templar
Biography
Bianca Templar is a proud palawa woman, artist, advocate for Aboriginal rights and owner/operator of Takamuna rrala designs (stand strong designs). Bianca grew up watching her Nan and elder, Aunty Gloria Templar, string rice shells, toothies and black crows into beautiful necklaces, sparking her interest in cultural arts at a young age.
Over the last four years, Bianca has learnt the traditional practices of shell stringing, basket weaving and making kelp water carriers, as well as more contemporary practices such as painting utilising the Tasmanian Aboriginal Petroglyphs, and resin work. Bianca has been showcased in Cultivate, Junction Arts and Sawtooth ARI Gallery.
Artist statement
Cultural Strength, 2022
This necklace is made from resin set in king maireener moulds, with either whole uncleaned and cleaned maireener or broken maireener with red paint, strung on wallaby sinew with a sterling silver clip on one end.
The necklace begins with uncleaned maireener shells set in resin to represent pre-colonial life, it then leads into broken and ‘bloody’ (painted red) shells to represent the impact of colonisation, to then finishing with whole clean maireener set with broken maireener to represent the fact that although our Culture was fractured during colonisation, we are still here, strong and whole.
Strong Black Womin – Forever Culture, 2022
Despite the incredibly inhumane actions towards and treatment of the palawa/pakana – the First Nation Peoples of lutruwita (Tasmania), our Mob have survived generation after generation, and continue to grow stronger as time goes on.
The story we grew up with was that we didn’t exist – that we and families no longer existed. Of course, that also encompassed the fallacy that there were no longer any continuing histories of our Cultural activities.
The exhibit we present today clearly demonstrates that we are a continuation of our Ancestors – 30,000+ years, including our ancient history, stories, families and Culture.
The stories presented for you represent the survival of an ancient People. Stories passed on, dance continued around camp-fires, tools to gather food and protect ourselves and family, changes and evolution of Ceremony, Dance and Story, ways of living whilst protecting our Country, evolution in ways of living to survive within an alien people from Britain.
We have struggled to be recognised and acknowledged as the continuing First Nation Peoples of this Ancient and Sacred Country, now known as Tasmania. We continue our Cultural activities, the foods our Old People ate, our Sacred historic Yarns from Old Times, etc, without ever retreating from our Sacredness as the First People of this ancient land.
Our exhibition clearly and strongly demonstrates that we have survived and remain strong in family, Culture, story – these aspects make us the strong People we are today.