By Mikayla van Loon
For Healesville’s Craig Murphy-Wandin, having an artwork exhibited in an NGV collective project is somewhat unbelievable.
The Wurundjeri Woiwurrung artist’s work ‘Man in dreaming 2022’ is currently on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV as part of Melbourne Now, an exhibition showcasing the work of over 200 Victorian based artists, designers, studios and firms.
A first for Murphy-Wandin, he said “it’s a privilege” to have an artwork featured in an NGV exhibition.
“It’s just an amazing feeling. I still can’t believe that I have pieces in there,” Murphy-Wandin said.
As part of the ‘Vessels’ project, Murphy-Wandin has drawn on his ancestral woodworking techniques to carve a fallen tree burl, a practice he began around seven years ago.
Merging his contemporary wood carving skills with traditional Aboriginal practices, Murphy-Wandin speeds up the process by using a chainsaw to extract a burl and then slows it down by coating it in layers of gum sap.
“In Healesville we’ve got all our beautiful, big rivers and I just walk along there occasionally and if I see a tree down with a burl on it, I’d go back and carve it off,” he said.
“The carving is really fast because it is a contemporary way. If I tried to do it the old fashioned way, traditionally with a green stone axe it would take forever because it’s hardwood, I’d be there a year, maybe.”
Once a burl has been carved, Murphy-Wandin will soak the burl in water to prevent air splitting the wood, then comes the staining process, where he returns to the bush to find sap.
While sometimes a difficult part of the process, Murphy-Wandin said it can be “a meditation to me”, by being in the bush looking for both the burls and sap.
Only starting to use gum sap two years ago, learning the technique as he went, Murphy-Wandin said he had faith in knowing it would work.
“It’s all self taught and trial and error really to use the gum sap and I knew it would work and it did,” he said.
With variations in sap colour, sometimes being red, orange, yellow or black, Murphy-Wandin said it can take up to eight weeks for a burl to start showing the colour.
“The staining is the really important part and it’s a beautiful thing to do and usually my ancestors would have used the sap as a glue, for glueing everything together, so that’s the real traditional part.”
As a former carpenter and horticulturist, Murphy-Wandin said returning to work with wood was a suggestion from his mother Aunty Joy Murphy-Wandin to help make message sticks and smoking ceremony bowls as gifts.
While some burls can be used for smoking bowls, Murphy-Wandin said each burl has its own story to tell, he just gives it the ability.
“Some burls have got the stories in them already like the one in NGV, it’s got a man in the grain that’s why I called it ‘Man in dreaming’. It all depends on the burl. It tells you what it’s here for.”
The grain of the wood comes from its age, with some burls collected by Murphy-Wandin being hundreds of years old.
“Some of these burls that I have are 500 to 600 years old. A really big manna gum that fell on the Watts River that I found, it’s quite amazing how old some of these burls are.
“You get the young ones too when a little tree falls down. They haven’t got the stories in them because they’re not as old and they haven’t been around for 700 years, so the grain hasn’t fully developed.”
As the only wooden texture in the ‘Vessels’ exhibition, Murphy-Wandin said he hopes it tells a story of how Aboriginal people worked with the land.
“I would like people to learn how amazing nature is and how my people worked alongside nature, in perfect harmony every single day.
“For 65,000 plus years they respected nature and nature gave the respect back.”
Melbourne Now, including Vessels, launched at the NGV on 24 March and is open until 20 August. To find out more, go to www.ngv.vic.gov.au/melbourne-now/home/
“I’m very proud of my work. That piece is a very, very special piece for me and I’m glad I get it back after the gallery because I don’t want to sell it but I’m just very, very happy and very humbled to be in that exhibition.”
