Video:
Koorie Heritage Trust
1st January 2018 Until 31st December 2050
ONLINE EXHIBITION – ORAL HISTORY RECORDINGS
Please explore our online film content via the links below:
On Country: Stories of Gunditjmara Elders (2018)
Aunty Bronwyn Razem is a Gunditjmara woman of the Kirrae Whurrong clan of Western Warrnambool. Watch as Aunty Bronwyn shows us her artists studio and shares her journey from growing up on the Hopkins River to becoming a master basket weaver and painter.
Produced by the Koorie Heritage Trust
Filmed and edited by David Long
With thanks to
Aunty Bronwyn Razem (Gunditjmara Elder)
Warrnambool Art Gallery
Gunditjmara Artist & Master Weaver
Bronwyn has played a vital role in the revival of the Traditional eel trap. In 2013, her eel trap with emu feathers granted her the Acquisitive Award in the Victorian Indigenous Arts Awards.
The National Museum Australia in Canberra as well as the Art Gallery of Ballarat have curated her eel traps for their permanent collections.
As a representative of Ngardang Girri Kalat Mimini's—four of Victoria's most prominent Indigenous female artists—Bronwyn was selected to attend the Festival of Pacific Arts in 2016.
A highlight in her career marked exhibiting with two of her eel traps alongside artists such as Vicki Couzens, Glenda Nicholls and Maree Clarke—who she had looked up to all her life—in the 2017 Sovereignty exhibition at the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne.
Through her work, Bronwyn acknowledges the importance of maintaining the cultural knowledge behind the weaving and the role this played in times past. Teaching traditional weaving techniques asserts the strength of this cultural practice that was utilised for every day life.
Bronwyn's workshops make an important contribution to reconnecting Aboriginal people with their culture and strengthening their identities, as well as bringing forth awareness and cultural values of Aboriginal people to the general public and educational institutions.