From the moment items featured in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery's latest exhibition left Tasmanian Aboriginal hands and Australian shores, curator and artist Julie Gough believes they were destined to return.
Fourteen Tasmanian Aboriginal artefacts from collections around the world, including one of the earliest from Australia, are on display in the new exhibition taypani milaythina-tu: Return to Country.
Contemporary responses to the ancestral objects are included as part of the exhibition and have helped open a conversation about the permanent return of internationally kept artefacts.
A rikawa (kelp water vessel) taken in the mid-19th century and donated to the British Museum in 1851, is included in the items returning for the first time — in its physical absence, the item has been important to the continuation of cultural practices in Tasmania.
A 'bittersweet' homecoming
Years of planning have led to the creation of the exhibition, one that features more than 40,000 years of Tasmanian Aboriginal knowledge in four connecting galleries at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart.
One of the curators and an artist in her own right, Ms Gough said the seed for this particular exhibition was planted back in 2007.
Amid a backdrop of international negotiations to bring items to Tasmania from abroad, the gallery collaborated with community and Tasmanian Aboriginal artists to produce responses to the artefacts.
That work has paid off but with the arrival of items, a new and deeply emotional countdown has begun — that is, to the eventual return of borrowed items to international institutions and private collections abroad.
"We've made a point of letting it be clear that these are loans," Ms Gough said as she took in a room of the exhibition.
"As I see it, it's part of the journey toward permanency."
The exhibition will close in February 2023 and items will be available for Tasmanian Aboriginal community members to view privately until a planned return in August 2024.
For Zoe Rimmer, an artist and former senior curator of First People's art and culture at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the deadline is the impetus for action.
"We've got two years now to campaign to keep them here or to at least get those loans on a renewable basis until they can stay forever," Ms Rimmer said.
Ms Rimmer and linguistic consultant Theresa Sainty have fashioned their own response to the return of items, a rikawa made from clear resin and printed using 3D technology.
"We have installed it as a placeholder for those rikawa that are overseas, that we would like to see returned home," Ms Rimmer said.
"We wanted to drive the conversation about technology and how institutions now can use things like 3D scanning, microscopic imagery, and all sorts of non-invasive ways to record cultural objects — there shouldn't be any excuse not to return the actual object."
Bull kelp collected from the shores of Tasmania surrounds the resin rikawa; it is a cultural practice Ms Rimmer and Ms Sainty undertake together as family, but it is an activity that is becoming more difficult with climate change.
A revived language, palawa kani, which was created from records of Tasmanian Aboriginal words spoken by various tribes found on the island prior to colonisation, can be heard above the installation.
"We wanted to speak language again to these objects and to welcome them home if they were to make it; it's also a call for those other objects that haven't been able to come home yet," Ms Rimmer said.
Continuation of culture through artefacts
There is awe in Ms Rimmer's voice as she recounts the first time she laid eyes on a rikawa that was taken in the late 18th century and misplaced in various overseas museum collections for more than 100 years.
The item was eventually found at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris by Gaye Sculthorpe, former head of the Oceania section at the British Museum and now at Deakin University in Melbourne as professor of cultural heritage and museum studies.
"She brought the kelp basket from the British Museum to Paris, and we brought [the rikawa] together to compare them and do some microscopic photography and other types of recording. It was incredible to see them together," Ms Rimmer said.
The practice of making the water vessels was revived after Tasmanian Aboriginal women saw images and sketches of the 19th-century rikawa kept at the British Museum.
"Resting for a little while" is how Ms Sainty describes the years in between when the practice was lost.
"By seeing those images, they began to reawaken that cultural practice and work with kelp once again," Ms Sainty said.
The death of Tasmanian Aboriginal people before seeing items returned is a point of deep sadness for Ms Rimmer and Ms Sainty, who say that one of the women who pioneered reviving rikawa, through the use of the British Museum images, died before the item was returned as a loan.
"Imagine how that old girl would feel if she could hold one of those original ones," Ms Sainty said.
"But she can't and that's the importance of bringing these objects home, so that not too many pass on without seeing these gifts return to us, from those old people."
Fine-tuning of rikawa made since the practice was restored is achievable through seeing the original creations in person, details such as which end the sticks should be inserted to gather the kelp and hold the basket shape for carrying water.
Replacing ancestral objects in institutions abroad with contemporary works is one option Ms Rimmer wants cultural institutions to consider.
Another is the development of a Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural space, supported by the Tasmanian government, to "welcome material home in a culturally appropriate setting".
"I feel like this is a statement as much as it is an exhibition," Ms Rimmer said.
"It's about the reclamation of our cultural heritage and an appeal to those institutions that hold our objects off country, isolated, in collection stores, to recognise their responsibility and return the objects for good.
"The knowledge that can be revived and revitalised from having those objects back on country — it's importance can't be understated."
