She used to cut up cereal boxes for supplies, now this paper artist wins awards

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 2 years ago

She used to cut up cereal boxes for supplies, now this paper artist wins awards

By Nick Galvin

Growing up in Pilliga in NSW’s north-west, artist Kerry Toomey was passionate about art and making things from an early age – even if the materials were not always to hand.

“I loved art at school, but we didn’t have those things at home,” she says. “I would create and do things and play and when my aunts were sewing I’d be there having a go at it. But when you think about it, if the choice was between getting food for a bunch of kids or buying some art materials, we’d be on the bottom of the list.

Kerry Toomey with one of the works that will feature in the upcoming show.

Kerry Toomey with one of the works that will feature in the upcoming show.Credit: James Brickwood

“You hardly even had paper. I remember cereal boxes being really important because you cut them and made them into things. It was a good time in our life even though it was hard.”

Toomey, a proud Gamilaroi woman, is one of nine children and can’t remember a time when she wasn’t surrounded by a big mob of relatives.

“I have a huge extended family and we treat each other like brother and sister,” she says. “To this day my children have not met all my relatives. There’s just too many and then they get confused because you’ve got aunties who aren’t aunties and uncles who aren’t uncles.”

However, there was a sharp division between home life and school. In the classroom, Indigenous culture was all but ignored while at home sharing stories and cultural practices, such as hunting, were the norm.

Kerry Toomey’s hats come in a range of shapes and sizes – each with their own story.

Kerry Toomey’s hats come in a range of shapes and sizes – each with their own story. Credit: James Brickwood

“We didn’t take our home business to school,” she says. “I don’t think it was valued at school anyway. When I was a kid, there was a paragraph in history books in year two or three or something and a picture of Aboriginal people standing on the rocky shores when the ships came in and that’s about it.”

After school, Toomey got a job as a teacher’s aide where her role was to liaise between local Aboriginal families and the school.

Advertisement

“I’d go talk to the aunties and uncles about what we’d be doing at the school,” she says. “Some of those kids are all grown up now and they still say really nice things to me rather than growl at me.”

Fired by her initial experience working in schools, Toomey moved to Sydney’s south, attended teaching college and became one of the first Indigenous teachers in the state, spending much of her time working in Redfern. All through her career she used art in the classroom but still got little or no time for her own practice.

Immediately after she retired from teaching, she enrolled in the College of Fine Arts (now UNSW Art and Design).

“It was time for me,” she says. “I thought I was a great painter until I went to COFA – but I pulled my head in – but to be in a class with other like-minded people – young, old – was fantastic. What a buzz!”

In recent years, Toomey’s art practice has focused on creating delicate sculptural works from paper, inspired by stories of family and country.

Last year she won the inaugural Casula Powerhouse Aboriginal scholarship award for a collection entitled Munduhii, meaning “shoes” in her language group. Incorporating emu feathers and snakeskin, each object is inspired directly by people and place.

Her latest works will feature in an upcoming show at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery called Wuliwulawala: Dharawal Women Sharing Stories that celebrates the work of more than a dozen First Nations women made on Dharawal country.

“I thought, I’ve made the shoes – what about maybe I do some hats,” she says. “I made a couple and then I was on a roll.”

The exquisite and intricate hats made from tissue paper are in different styles and many incorporate found and other objects of cultural significance.

Some of the hats are modelled on mourning caps, traditionally worn for a mourning period of up to six weeks.

Loading

“My caps are about mourning the loss and the impact colonial Australia has had in terms of taking our language from us and putting us as second-class citizens,” says Toomey.

Other hats are more playful – swimming caps and hats worn for Sunday best.

“My old aunties, whenever they went into town, had on one of those beautiful hats with big flowers and stuff. I used to think that was gorgeous. I’d try them on when I was a kid. The hats are reflecting on my happy times with my aunties.”

Ever the teacher, showing her work also gives Toomey the chance to talk to visitors and answer questions about her culture and discuss many of the darker sides of the colonial occupation.

“Every Aboriginal community has got somebody that they know has gone through the Stolen Generation,” she says.

“Everybody, which is really sad, can turn around and say they know somebody with a death in custody. But then people will say, ‘how come you fellas have got a chip on your shoulder?’ and you just think, well, the whole country, we’re on a learning curve’.”

Wuliwulawala: Dharawal Women Sharing Stories, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Gymea, April 17 to June 14

Most Viewed in Culture

Loading