Project Overview

Ancestors’ is the debut in a collaborative series between furniture studio, Sawdust Bureau, and award-winning, indigenous, Gurindji artist, Sarrita King. The table features a dot-painted artwork (using the medium of hundreds of inlaid brass dots) based on her original artwork, ‘Ancestral Pathways’.

The piece was designed as a low-slung coffee table, which when viewed from certain angles, the brass dots would almost disappear into the timber, but would then fully reveal themselves as the viewer approaches.

Her artwork explores the routes, landmarks and elements which indigenous ancestors used to survive and navigate for over 40,000 years. Australian Indigenous people were nomadic and traveled vast distances for many reasons including surviving the elements, for sacred ceremonies and to find food and water.

Organisation

Sawdust Bureau

Team

Sarrita King
Bryan Cush
Keith Murphy
Nikki Liston

Project Brief

'Ancestors' was developed over a period of several months collaboration between Melbourne-based Sawdust Bureau and Darwin-based Sarrita. Sawdust Bureau briefed Sarrita on the concept of incorporating the crossover links between indigenous dreaming and the astrological understanding and mapping of the stars into her artwork.

Scientific, astrological mapping is evident in the appearance of the Southern Cross formation but the artwork also features additional layers of dotting reflecting markings made on the land over thousands of years. These can be seen entangled with patterns covering the land today, such as sand hills, flora and paths made by humans and animals. Beneath the land are the waterways that have been virtually constant over time. The river system shown meandering across the canvas, cutting through the land, are representative of the waterways found in the lands of Sarrita’s ancestors from Katherine through the desert across to Mt. Isa.

Ironbark was selected as the timber for the piece due to it’s impressive grain patterns, mimicking the wave patterns of Sarrita's artwork. It’s range of hues and tones also provide direct references to outback Australia.

Project Innovation

The combination of a unique, indigenous species of Australian timber (Ironbark) with indigenous story-telling aims to blur the boundaries between contemporary furniture, artwork and cultural understanding.

We believe this is the first time that indigenous Australian artwork has been represented using a technique of combining brass dots upon a timber ‘canvas’.

Design Challenge

The main challenge was incorporating an artwork as complex and multi-layered as Sarrita's into the piece. The canvas travelled back and forth from Melbourne to Darwin via courier at various stages of the design process to break it down to it's basic elements and test different dot sizing and variations of dot pattern.

The physical challenge of the process of manually plunge routing, inlaying, gluing, flush trimming and sanding over 700 inlaid brass dots of varying sizes was also fairly time consuming (as demonstrated in the timelapse videos).

The follow-up piece in the collaborative series (My Country's Story) features over 1500 dots.

Sustainability

Sawdust Bureau are committed to using only Australian species of timber, in the case of 'Ancestors', locally reclaimed Ironbark was used. This dramatically cuts down the carbon footprint of the piece and by using solid timber, as opposed to veneered plywood or chipboard, the piece will have a multi-generational life-span.

The finish used is a natural Danish oil which can easily be reapplied and refinished by the user, again adding to the lifecycle of the piece.