A woven legacy
Minka comes from a legacy of weaving and basket making.
“When I was little, they used to have basket-making gatherings at our house. I think the first ever basket I made was a pine needle basket which I think I then kept cinnamon sticks in as logs for my Barbie. My dad is known in the basket weaving world as the Willow Man. He had an interest in basket making for a long time. When I was about 17 he enrolled me in a class, jewellery making with basket making techniques. He did it with me as a sort of bonding exercise, which I was reluctant to do but, in the end, loved it. And then we both joined the basketmakers of Tasmania.”
As she progressed as an artist, Minka moved to more biomorphic shapes and formed a connection with filament. “Originally I was working in natural materials. I grew up in a house where you made everything yourself and you were very frugal, and I loved the idea that you could seemingly make something from nothing. So natural materials were sort of free and easy to use, and all I needed was sometimes a needle and a pocket knife and four scissors and that was it. I loved the simplicity.”
Eventually, nature itself steered Minka away from natural materials. “I actually got really sick, and I became allergic to all the natural materials that I was working with. So one of my teachers, Bob Jennings, suggested working with plastics and metal. Once I got onto it, I was hooked and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Minka never lost her frugality though, “It so hurts to have to buy materials. That’s why a lot of materials are found materials as well, because I hate having to spend money.”
Mind Garden
Minka’s recent exhibition was Mind Garden, where viewers were delighted with an array of colourful woven suspended sculptures to explore from a distance and up close, getting lost in the details and fully immersing themselves in the experience.
“Mind Garden was in the incinerator art space in Sydney and was made up of over 120 individual sculptures that I hung in a format like a C shape so that you could walk into the installation and be surrounded by all this work.”
“It’s called Mind Garden because it’s my imaginary internal landscape. Having it so people can walk into it, that was me sort of allowing people to enter into my world, my brain in a way. Each sculpture was an individual sculpture in itself but put together it made more sense they’re each a sort of an emotion or a memory or sort of a playful experiment with materials. I wanted people to feel really enveloped by the artworks.”