Torres Strait Islanders are one of two distinct Indigenous groups of Australia, with the other being Aboriginal peoples. The Torres Strait Islands are located between the northern Cape York Peninsula and the borders of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. There are at least 274 islands in the Torres Strait, with 18 of these being home to present-day communities.

Cultural practices in the Torres Strait Islands can be linked to Papua New Guinea and Aboriginal Australia. They are characterised by a strong ceremonial life, notably dance and performance. Torres Strait Islanders have a vibrant artistic culture, with printmaking, mask making and weaving being some of the most distinct mediums of contemporary Islander cultural expression.

The sea, land, sky and waterways are central to many legendary stories of creation that predate colonisation and have a significant presence today. Torres Strait Islanders have an oral culture, and stories are communicated through song and performance. There are two distinct traditional languages in the Torres Strait Islands: Meriam Mir (Eastern Islands) and Kala Lagaw Ya (Western and Central Islands). Torres Strait Creole, a mixture of traditional languages and standard Australian English, is also spoken by most Islanders.

Today about 80% of Australians of Torres Strait Islander descent live on the mainland, with large communities residing in north Queensland towns such as Townville, Mackay and Cairns, following the relocation of Torres Strait Islanders to the mainland for further work and education. Although located away from the Islands, Torres Strait Islanders residing on the mainland maintain a strong sense of culture and identity, as seen in the works of Torres Strait Islander artists held in the Art Gallery of NSW's collection.

The Torres Strait Islands experienced significant social, cultural and political change, when members of the London Missionary Society arrived at Erub (Darnley Island) on 1 July 1871, during what has become known in the islands as the ‘Coming of Light’. As Islanders were introduced to Christianity, many cultural activities and items were changed, or became banned under the influence of Christian missionaries. Torres Strait Islanders accepted and incorporated Christianity into their existing political and cultural structures, a process which has been embraced as a ‘fulfilment of the traditional belief system rather than a complete break with the past, as [Islanders] were previously encouraged to do.’(1) Yearly celebrations for the Coming of the Light take place on 1 July in island and mainland Islander communities.

The practice of making performance regalia and dance objects is a distinctive and celebrated part of Islander culture, and this is illustrated on the Torres Strait Island flag.

Torres Strait Islanders are the only culture in the world to make turtleshell masksm known as krar (which translates to turtleshell) in the Western Islands and le-op (which translates to human face) in the Eastern Islands. These striking objects have attracted anthropologists and ethnographers to study the region. In 1898-99, the British anthropologist and ethnologist Alfred Cort Haddon undertook an expedition to the islands, collecting approximately 2000 objects, including traditional collections of pre-Christian material culture - from the Torres Strait Islands. Today, the Haddon Collection is regarded as the most comprehensive, representative and well-documented collection of Torres Strait Islander material culture in the world. It is a key point of reference for many contemporary Torres Strait Islander artists and arts practitioners who view the process of reconnecting with culturally significant objects and stories as a way of continuing the culture of their region.

Locate the Torres Strait Islands on a map. Choose one island and research they way people live and work there.

Find out about the climate, seasons, flora and fauna in the Torres Strait Islands. In small groups develop a soundtrack for the weather using percussive instruments. Play the score back to your class.

Research the different names for the Islands in the Torres Strait. Why do you think there is more than one name for each island?

Watch the film Mabo (2012). Research and write a brief report which explains how significant you think the Mabo case was for Indigenous and other Australians. Discuss your ideas with members of your class.

We are the sea people. We show the people of the world our culture. Our culture is very strong. God’s given us this culture to celebrate everyday . . . We have weddings, tombstone unveilings – we’ve got culture, we’ve got singing to do, we’re dancing all the time. We are happy people. – Ken Thaiday Snr, 2012

Born in 1950 on Erub (Darnley Island), Ken Thaiday Snr is an artist, performer, composer and choreographer. He is best known for his elaborately constructed dance machines, or 'mobilised artefacts' as the artist calls them. Traversing the realms of performance, sculpture and installation, Thaiday’s vibrant and celebratory works communicate the dynamic and enduring qualities of Torres Strait Islander culture.

Thaiday’s practice fuses cultural tradition with personal history, and his works are embedded in the ceremonial life of Torres Strait Islander culture. Having spent his childhood on Erub, Thaiday grew up learning the traditional dances of his region from his father, Tat, a senior cultural leader and choreographer. The artist says: 'dancing is very important to me because of my father. He was a very good dancer so this why I dance, to carry on my culture, to stand in his footsteps as my sons will do for me. Every Torres Strait Islander is like this. We learnt from our grandfathers and forefathers.'

As an adult, Thaiday worked in North Queensland as a builder for the railways. The artist says his experience in this occupation helped him develop the skills and techniques to construct his large-scale sculptural works. In 1987, Thaiday went on to become a founding member of the Cairns-based Loza Dance Troupe, which took on the role of performing for annual Coming of the Light celebrations in Cairns. The artist produced headdresses and hand-held 'dance machines' for his dance troupe, which became the foundation for his art practice.

Thaiday says each of his works is like 'an engineering project. I make things move. I like to make things different.' Beizam (shark) dance mask is an example of the artist’s innovative and experimental approach to re-creating Torres Strait Islander dance regalia. The work takes the form of the hammerhead shark, an important family totem and a symbol of law and power in the Eastern Island region of the Torres Strait. Referencing media used to create traditional Torres Strait dance apparatuses, Thaiday uses bamboo and feathers, using the feathers to symbolise the foam created in the water as a shark emerges from its surface. The work also features the artist’s signature pulley systems that activate and animate the work, whilst mimicking the function of traditional Torres Strait Islander dance objects that are used to enact important stories in ceremony.

Questions and activities

Research the dhari. How does Ken Thaiday’s Beizam (shark) dance mask 1996 borrow from traditional techniques of making dhari? How does the artist innovate his own style?

I just think the imagery of us as Aboriginal people is kitsch – it was and still is – how we’re seen, like not real people. So I enter that dialogue, but I like to change it around, so we’ve got some kind of say, and we’re making fun of it. - Destiny Deacon, 2008

Born in Maryborough, Queensland in 1957, Destiny Deacon is a Melbourne-based artist, performer, video maker, writer and broadcaster. A self-described ‘old fashioned political artist’, Deacon is renowned for her performative photographs that explore Indigenous identity and race relations in Australia. Deacon’s work is characterised by her use of ‘Blak’ humour, achieved through her photographic tableaus that satirise and lampoon Indigenous cultural stereotypes, a tactic employed by the artist to comment on issues such as racism. Having coined the term ‘Blak’ in the early 1990s, Deacon is credited for pioneering a new language for Indigenous self-expression. Today the term has been adopted by a generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists who continue to reclaim contemporary Indigenous identity through art and cultural practice.

Deacon’s imagery blends fantasy with scenarios based on reality. Black dollies, objects associated with a racist past and a colonialist agenda, are a recurring motif in Deacon’s practice, and against the backdrop of the artist’s lounge room in often whimsical and bizarre situations, are given a politically charged edge. The artist says: ‘I just saw dolls as representing us as people because they weren’t able to say anything, and they were just looked at and things like that, so they were like an empty vessel for me to fill. I ended up liking dolls – I’ve never been a doll-lover in my life – I still am not. When I was growing up I didn’t like dolls or anything. I just saw them as representing us as people.’

Family is another recurring theme in Deacon’s practice. A key influence for the artist has been her mother, Eleanor Harding, a Torres Strait Islander woman who moved from Islands to the mainland, and became a politically involved and respected figure in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. Early in her career, Deacon studied politics at university and worked as a history teacher, then later, inspired by her mother, pursued her passion for politics, working for Aboriginal activist Dr. Charles Perkins as a staff trainer in Canberra. After having her first show, ‘Pitcha Mi Koori’ as part of the Mebourne Fringe Festival in 1991, Deacon’s exhibition career quickly gained momentum and she began her career as an artist.

Arrears Windows is a 2009 work by Deacon that offers a satirical commentary on urban culture. Borrowing from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window, Arrears Windows sees Deacon re-stage the upscale New York apartment setting of Hitchcock’s film using trashy objects such as dirty and disused crates and her signature kitsch black dollies. In a deliberately low-budget and formulated setting that almost mimics a melodramatic soap opera, Deacon’s image contains an element of dark humour and irony, which underscores themes of class and the socio-economic implications of people living on the fringes of society.

Questions and activities

Write a response to the work of Destiny Deacon, identifying the ways in which it borrows from performance and theatre. Research other Torres Strait Islander artists who use these elements in their work. Explore why this could be a strong feature of work from this region.

My identity as a Torres Strait Islander is infused in my paintings, sculptures, watercolours, installations, drawings, photographs, films, lithograph, linoprints, ceramics and woodblocks. It is an integral part of who I am. A line, a stroke, a symbol, a place, an idea unconsciously flows through my body into my work . . . It is as much as part of me as the sea, the earth, the sky is part of everybody’s story. – Ellen José, 1998

Born in Cairns in 1951, Ellen José is a painter, printmaker, photographer and teacher whose practice explores Torres Strait Islander identity. Intersecting the realms of the personal, the political, and the cultural, José’s practice deals with historical narratives of colonisation, dispossession and resilience. By interrogating Indigenous Australian histories and reflecting on personal experiences, José’s practice explores the legacies of the past and the impact they have on the lives and identities of Indigenous people today.

Described as ‘luminous’ and ‘melancholic,’ José’s works draw a focus to the intervention of other cultures into Torres Strait Islander culture throughout history. Her family was forced to flee from the Islands during the Coming of the Light, and she often uses her practice to critically examine the introduction of Christianity to the Islands and the profound ways in which it has become part of the lives of Islanders today. The artist’s practice has been characterised by its innovative aesthetic, which fuses Torres Strait Islander, Asian (Sumi-e) and European techniques.

José’s work Life in the Balance, 1993, is a multimedia work that explores the struggle faced by Torres Strait Islander people with balancing a traditional lifestyle with the modern world. Using found and reclaimed objects, José’s pyramid-shaped assemblage is based on the ‘nath’, a type of platform used in the Torres Strait for spearing dugong. Although the shell has many uses, in Jose’s work it is used to signify ‘long life’. The globe, minuscule in comparison to the bamboo construction framing it, represents how insignificant humans are in the universe.

Questions and activities

‘[Jose’s works evoke] the ghost of traditional lifestyles that have since ceased to exist, and celebrate the resilience of her people in the face of colonisation.’ – William Mora. Research Ellen Jose’s body of work from this point of view, and identify the ways in which it communicates information about changing social, cultural and geographic circumstances for Torres Strait Islanders.