Living the heritage, not curating the past: a study of lirrgarn, agency & art in the Warmun Community

Abstract

This thesis is an historical and contemporary examination of the creative, social and cultural world of the Warmun community in Western Australia. It focuses on how the community as a whole, and as individuals, exert agency and maintain their values and priorities when situated within larger, sometimes more powerful, structures and frameworks that differ from their own. Through the prism of art, the research examines the community's engagement with and value of the Warmun Community Collection, their history of adjustment, the unofficial roles of the Warmun Art Centre and how the Warmun Art Centre supports and enables informal learning. The thesis connects these four themes through a socio-historical analysis of the experiences of Warrmarn people, ethnographic and visual descriptions of their actions and a visual examination of the manifestations of their actions—objects of creative practice or, artworks. In doing so, the thesis reveals several overlapping matters: it tracks the development of a museum in an Aboriginal community; it brings to light the hidden roles of the Warmun Art Centre; it contributes to the developing field of informal learning; it reveals how people express agency in daily life; it unveils the proprietorial relationship people have with objects; and finally, it lays bare the purpose, use and interpretations of objects, which has at times made Warmun residents, and their sites of cultural production, tangential to the objects they make. The research finds that Warrmarn people live their heritage rather than curate their past.