Design and Art Australia Online

Vicki Couzens, born in 1960, is a member of the Kirrae Wurrong and Gunditjmara clans of western Victoria. Couzens’ work encompasses a range of media, including painting, installation, mixed media, sculpture, printmaking, public art and possum skin cloak making. All of her art practice is a means to connect with aspects of her Indigenous heritage and to explore her sense of belonging to family, ancestors and country. Materials are selected for their potential to be interpreted as repositories of Indigenous experience so as to honour aspects of Indigenous history that have been suppressed by colonial paradigms, and affirm the continuity of Indigenous identity. In the catalogue for the “? Lost & Found” exhibition, Couzens states that

'the retrieval, revival and re-use of our language is an important part of our cultural regeneration as a People’, and her exhibition and artwork titles are often in the Kirrae Wurrong language.’ (2001, p.11).

Her work has often been informed by sustained periods of research with clan elders and within museum archives. A defining moment in Couzens’ artistic career took place in 1999 when she and fellow Indigenous artist Lee Darroch participated in a printmaking workshop in Melbourne. During a visit to Museum Victoria, the artists were shown two possum skin cloaks that had been acquired from Lake Condah and Maiden’s Punt (Echuca) in the 19th Century. Lake Condah is part of the artist’s country, and Couzens said of the experience

'...to see the cloak so close up – it was really awesome, it was really tangible. It was just like a loop to your ancestors and you could almost hear them whispering…’ (Reynolds, 2005:4).

Traditionally possum skin cloaks were highly individualised, and as Amanda Reynolds writes in Wrapped in a Possum Skin Cloak (2005), the designs that were incised upon the insides of the cloaks 'symbolised country, geographical features and the wearer’s clan and tribal affiliations’ (2005, p. 13).

Used for warmth, as baby carriers and as drums during ceremony (where they would be stretched across the knees of seated women), they were considered so much a part of a person’s life that when people died they were buried wrapped in their cloaks. After seeing the 19th century cloaks, Couzens and Darroch, along with Vicki’s sister Debra Couzens and fellow Victorian Indigenous artist Treanha Hamm, decided to revive the making of possum skin cloaks, and set out to create reproductions of the old cloaks, as well as a body of work (including prints, drawings and an 'old’ and 'new’ cloak making toolkit) that was inspired by the experience of reclaiming this knowledge. Completed in 2002, the Tooloyn Koorrtakay – Squaring Skins for Rugs project is now on display in the First Australians gallery of the National Museum of Australia.

Couzens went on to participate with Hamm, Darroch and Maree Clark in a research and reclamation project, which involved consulting with and conducting workshops with members of each of the Victorian Indigenous language groups, to facilitate the creation of their own possum skin cloak. The project brought about a great sharing of cultural knowledge between groups and between generations, and culminated in 35 out of the 37 Victorian Indigenous communities having their own cloak. Elders from each of these groups performed during the opening ceremony of the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, wearing their community’s cloak.

In 2003 Couzens was awarded the inaugural Deadly Art Award (later the main award of the annual Victorian Indigenous Art Awards). She has participated in a number of exhibitions, including “? Lost & Found” (2001), at the Koorie Heritage Trust and Immigration Museum, Melbourne, “Mission Voices“ (2007), also at the Koori Heritage Trust, and “Ng woka, woka nganin: I am the land and the land is me”(2008) at the Bunjilaka gallery at the Melbourne Museum. In 2005, Couzens, Hamm and Darroch were commissioned by the City of Melbourne, and Aboriginal Affairs Victoria to create the 'Birrarung Wilam’ Aboriginal Park, which is located behind Federation Square in the Yarra River Precinct.

In late 2008 she was living in Warrnambool in Victoria and was a mother of 5 and grandmother of 4.

Writers:

Fisher, Laura

Date written:

2008

Last updated:

2011