Aboriginal artist reclaims culture by subverting souvenir tea towels

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It all started as a gift for a friend for their 40th birthday.

Indigenous artist Kait James stumbled across an Aboriginal calendar souvenir tea towel with a racist image of her culture. She decided to have some fun.

Artist Kait James says her colourful and humorous works are a way of disarming the audience.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Taking inspiration from David Bowie’s 1983 music video for Let’s Dance, James hand-stitched an image over the top. It was an Aboriginal-inspired Bowie, sitting proudly on a rock, in a pair of bright red shoes. Then, in big, bold, bright letters she embroidered the words “Treaty, Yeah!”

“Because we love dancing to treaties,” the proud Wadawurrung woman said with a smile.

James said Bowie’s famous clip for the hit song, which was filmed in Australia and featured a young Indigenous couple struggling to exist in modern-day Sydney, was the first real representation of urban Aboriginal people she saw growing up.

Work from artist Kait JamesCredit: Wayne Taylor

Even as a young child, James was struck by how far removed the images of Aboriginal people depicted on the souvenir cloths – which circulated from the 1960s until the ’80s – were from her experience and her culture.

“They were often really stereotypical and racist,” she said. “They didn’t represent what I knew and featured stolen imagery of spears and shields. I was never able to relate to them as an urban Indigenous person.”

The 40th birthday present was a hit. Since then, James has used these tea towels as a canvas for many of her works.

She often takes a cheeky approach to colonial depictions of Aboriginal people on vintage tea towels and subverts them by “overwriting” them with humorous images, messages and pop culture influences.

“I use humour as a bit of a shield for myself because I’m quite shy,” she said. “But it’s also a way to disarm the viewer.”

James at the workshop in South Melbourne.Credit: Wayne Taylor

This tongue-in-cheek and clever, colourful artwork is on full display at the Australian Tapestry Workshop, where she is an artist-in-residence.

Inside the gallery space at the South Melbourne workshop, there is an original Aboriginal tea towel with pictures of burial posts that James has stitched over with an image of right-wing senator Pauline Hanson’s head.

In bright orange thread are the words “Language has been murdered” with a speech bubble coming from Hanson’s mouth. “I’m Indigenous, I was born here,” it says – referencing past comments made by Hanson.

James has used tea towels as a canvas for many of her works.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Next to it, is another repurposed tea towel from 1984, it is simply inscribed with the words: “RioTnt. Bloody Shit.”

James had always longed to be an artist, but after studying photography at RMIT in 2001 decided to put her artistic dreams on hold and instead travelled the world.

Fast-forward 17 years and James was made redundant from her admin job. She serendipitously found herself at a traditional weaving artistic workshop held by her cousin, reigniting her creative spark.

Since then James, now 45, has been making waves in the art world. She has three large-scale pieces, titled The KLF (Koori Liberation Front), on display as part of the Melbourne Now exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Her works have also been on display at the Geelong Arts Centre.

The bright and colourful pieces, which resemble street art, each have their own corrective messages celebrating Indigenous rights and questioning the way British colonial culture has dominated Australia’s history.

On Saturday afternoon, James led a tapestry class at the Australian Tapestry Workshop, with a group of 10 women.

Among a sea of colourful threads, they yarned with each other as they stitched designs on blank-tea towels, soft music humming in the background.

At the front of the workshop, was a cream coloured, hand-woven tea towel James had made and hung up for the class.

“Bloody dishes,” it said. “Blah blah blah.”

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