Design and Art Australia Online

Ellen Trevorrow, Ngarrindjeri weaver, was born at Point McLeay (Raukkan) in 1955 and raised near Tailem Bend. Tailem Bend is a small town in the Murraylands region of South Australia, and Trevorrow spent her childhood in fringe dwellers camps just outside of the town with her grandmother, Ellen Brown, from whom she gets her name. She attended primary school in Tailem Bend, and moved South to Bonney Reserve near Meningie when she was 11 and went on to complete high school. She met her husband to be, Tom Trevorrow, when she was fourteen. They were married in 1976 and went on to have seven children. They have remained in or near Meningie ever since.

Trevorrow had watched her grandmother weave when she was a child, however her own weaving practice only began in 1982 when she attended a workshop which was facilitated by Steve Hemming of the South Australian Museum, with Aunty Dorrie Kartinyeri, an elder from Point McLeay. Kartinyeri showed the workshop participants how to weave, where to find the rushes, and how to prepare them properly for weaving. Prior to colonisation, weaving had an important practical purpose in Ngarrindjeri culture. During the days of the Point McLeay Mission, Aboriginal women were encouraged to treat their weavings as a source of income and Allen writes that 'During the mid-1800s and the early twentieth century, the women at Point McLeay were famous for the baskets they made to sell’ (Allen, L. in B. Parkes (ed) 2005, p. 95). Kartinyeri initiated the workshop as one of the few Ngarrindjeri women who knew the craft. As Trevorrow writes in correspondence with the author: 'Auntie Dorrie must have felt that she had to pass on the knowledge of Ngarrindjeri weaving while she still could’ (pers. comm. 2009). The workshop was also attended by Yvonne Koolmatrie who, like Trevorrow, went on to devote her life to weaving as both a practitioner and teacher.

Trevorrow regards herself as a 'cultural weaver’ to emphasise that her practice is about cultural regeneration and affirmation, as opposed to being a purely artistic preoccupation (Conroy, D. in in S. Kleinert & M. Neale (eds) 2000, p. 722). She and her husband have been foundation members of Camp Coorong Race Relations Cultural Education Centre since 1985. Camp Cooring is located close to Meningie, adjacent to the site of Bonney Reserve. It is situated within the Coorong, a coastal ecosystem of estuaries, lakes and lagoons where the Murray River meets the sea. Trevorrow has a deep sense of attachment to the Murray River, which constitutes part of her Ngarrindjeri Clan Group’s Traditional Country. Through guided field trips, talks and cultural workshops, visitors to Camp Coorong are educated about the complex nature of the Coorong and its wildlife, and on the importance of the Coorong in Ngarrindjeri Culture. Trevorrow regularly teaches weaving workshops at the camp, and also holds workshops at schools, festivals and institutions. She finds great pleasure in teaching both adults and children and regards the intimate, sharing social environment that is brought into being as one of the most valuable aspects of the weaving: “It’s extremely satisfying to sit and yarn while you weave together. I like weaving with old people because they yarn about things, the past which is the future for their children. Sometimes special stories are revealed, it’s good to share and exchange” (personal communication 2009).

Trevorrow began exhibiting her weavings in the late 1980s. Among her first group exhibitions were 'Ngarrindjeri Art and Craft’ at the South Australian Museum (1987) and 'River’ at Artspace, Adelaide Festival Centre (1989). Other exhibitions have included 'Aboriginal Women’s Exhibition’ at the Art Gallery of NSW (1991), 'talking. listening’ at Artspace, Adelaide Festival Centre (1994) and 'Tactility’ at the National Gallery of Australia (2003).

Trevorrow is well known for her 'Sister’ baskets. A Sister basket is so-called because it comprises two identical baskets joined together around the edges with sedge twine, with an opening left at the top. Historically, the Sister basket or Nakal as it is known in the Ngarrindjeri language is used to collect herbs and carry small personal objects. Trevorrow and her husband worked out the technique for creating a Sister basket after they examined an historical example in the collection of the Camp Coorong Museum which was made by Ethel Whympie, Tom Trevorrow’s great-grandmother. Sister baskets made by Trevorrow are in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Migration museum in Adelaide. For the 1997 exhibition 'The Somatic Object’ at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery in Sydney, Trevorrow’s work was an interpretation of the Seven Sisters Dreaming Story, a story that the Ngarrindjeri share with Indigenous groups of the Western Desert. With the encouragement of Canberra artist Wendy Dodd, Trevorrow made seven Sister baskets that formed an installation for the exhibition.

Trevorrow’s baskets, as well as her other woven forms such as fish scoops and mats, are made from thin bundles of sedge grasses, which are freshwater rushes that grow in sandy soil in the Coorong, surrounding Lakes and River Murray waterways. The bundles are held together with a single reed which is wrapped around them as they are coiled into shape, and which stitches the coils to each other as the weave progresses. Sedge grasses used to grow prolifically along the Murray River and in the Coorong, however due to prolonged drought and intensive irrigation upstream, the flow of water to the mouth of the river and into the Coorong has declined dramatically. As a result, the freshwater rushes grow far more sparsely, their growth stunted by the rising salt water table. Trevorrow collects the rushes from Lake Alexandria, near Poltalloch Station, but always leaves clumps to ensure regrowth, and in some areas plants the seeds of the rushes to ensure a continuous supply. Both Trevorrow and her husband have sought to publicise the environmental damage that is being done to the Coorong, Lakes and River Murray, and Camp Coorong and Trevorrow’s weaving workshops are an integral part of this effort.

Writers:

Fisher, Laura Note: In consultation with the artist, 2009

Date written:

2009

Last updated:

2011