Kathleen Korda was born and educated at the Daly River mission. In the 1960s, When she was a teenager, she moved out to Peppimenarti.
There her mother and grandmother taught her how to weave baskets, string bags and fish-nets.
Kathleen lives at Peppimenarti with her 5 daughters and 9 grandchildren. She also works at the Peppimenarti health clinic.
Kathleen has emerged as a specialist walipun fish-net weaver in recent years, and is currently the only member of the community to weave the nets. The process takes approximately 3 to 6 months. At the very beginning of the wet season the natural pigments (strawberries, roots and ash) are collected and used to dye the merepan (sand-palm) fibres. Throughout the wet season, Kathleen constructs the twine and uses a dilly string bag stitch (loop stitch, knotless netting technique) to weave the net. Once the weaving is completed, the edges of the net are attached to an oval dried bamboo frame.
This is what Kathleen said about one of her walipun fish nets:
‘This one took me 2 or 3 months to weave. More time for the collecting, dying, twining.
I collect the sand palm with the other women. I boil it up on my own.
You can get the fibre anytime. We get that sand palm same time as orange colour and grey, brown, purple.
I don’t use white much when I weave.
I have done painting too but I like weaving more.
My mother taught me how, and her mother taught her.
It was really nice seeing it in the museum (MAGNT).’
Kathleen is Regina Wilson’s first cousin; her father was Regina’s mother’s brother.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2011 Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, Darwin
2010 Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, Darwin
2009 Floating Life: Contemporary Aboriginal Fibre Art, Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland Art Gallery
2009 Yewirr, Raft Artspace, Darwin
2008 Telstra National Indigenous and Torres-Strait Islander Art Award, Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory, Darwin
2007 Peppimenarti, Chalk Horse, Sydney
2007 Peppimenarti Community Open Day
