In 2015, Out of Queensland: New Indigenous Textiles presented digitally printed textiles commissioned by the Gallery and designed by nine notable Queensland artists.

Out of Queensland: New Indigenous Textiles exhibition forms part of the Cairns Art Gallery online First Nation Research Archive developed as part of the Gallery’s online Legacy Archive produced to celebrate the Gallery’s 30th anniversary.

In 2015, nine artists were asked to consider how imagery used in their paintings, linoprints and relief-sculptures, might be reconceived as floor-to-ceiling lengths of fabric. All nine textile lengths were purchased from the exhibition for the Gallery’s Collection, initiating the Gallery’s Indigenous Textile Collection.

In translating art to fabric, the essential driver was design. Each artist was inspired to rescale his or her imagery into a repeat-pattern format, imagining how this would complement the drape and movement of pure linen. These results were achieved in collaboration with the artists and Cairns-based designer, Bobbie Ruben.

Scale was a key consideration in developing each design. The monumentality of Gordon Hookey’s Murri people as Wallaroos drove home an Aboriginal perspective of the world, while Vernon Ah Kee’s brutalities were chillingly large. Ryan Presley similarly used repeat motifs to underline the recurring effects of oppression in Bedburners.

Designs by Cairns-based artists Naomi Hobson, Heather Koowootha and Brian Robinson respectively depicted family and country, traditional women’s building materials, and agricultural fertility blooming on ancestral lands. Claudia Moodoonuthi’s Burkunda was based on body marking designs, and Arthur Roughsey’s textile featured his Lardil tradition, incorporating an image of Thuwathu, the Rainbow Serpent. Injinoo artist Teho Ropeyarn’s design was based on an ancestral story about two sister-birds looking for scrub yam – an instruction story about damage wrought by trickery.

For each artist the Out of Queensland exhibition was a unique opportunity to take their arts practice into the world of fabric and digital printing.