Off the wall

SHONAE HOBSON, BENDIGO Art Gallery’s First Nations curator, faced a hard task deciding exactly how to showcase more than 100 pieces from 70 artists and designers for the new exhibition Piinpi: Contemporary Indigenous Fashion.

The skill in each garment, fabric, basket or piece of jewellery – informed by more than 65,000 years of histories and culture – gives each piece the quality of artworks, and yet most are made with a modern wearer in mind. “They really blur the boundaries between fashion and art,” she says of the final selection of creators in the exhibit. “It’s really a testament to the types of work that are being produced by First Nations designers and artists who are drawing on traditional techniques and ancient practices, but through really innovative methods.”

She landed somewhere between the static museum world and a contemporary showcase, inverting the notion that histories are the domain of the past. In fact, as Hobson points out, what is common between all the pieces