Emily Creighton Shell Neclace Maker_Cap Barren Island

On Cape Barren Island there is an example of cross-cultural referencing in the work of Emily Creighton who is not Aboriginal but Papuan. She made shell necklaces consistent in form and style to the necklaces being produced on Cap Barren Island by Aboriginal women living there. Emily made necklaces for sale for over 20 years with the tacit approval of the Aboriginal women on the Island up until 1991. The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery was purchasing her necklaces for resale from approximately 1986 and up until the early 1990s. They were sold as souvenirs, novelties or curios by the museum and in this sense Emily was participating in the long-standing Bass Strait Islands' 'trade' in shell necklaces.

Emily Creighton was an ethnic Papuan married to a Canadian-born farmer. She and her husband moved to Cape Barren Island from Papua New Guinea in the 1980s as it offered them a haven to raise a family. She was introduced to necklace making by Aboriginal woman living on the Island – Sahara Mansel in particular and others. Through Sahara Mansel she understood that the necklaces had a currency as a 'Sweetheart' gifts – male to female and possibly female to male as well. Further, Emily understood that they were sold to provide money for the purchase of tea and sugar from the trading boats that visited the Island. She was also told of a tobacconist in Brisbane Street Launceston who traded necklaces for tobacco in the 1940s.

In essence Emily Creighton made necklaces for sale in the way the Aboriginal community has done since at least the 1930s and for an unknown time before – for pin money. Emily was a respected community member on Cape Barren Island and she established many longstanding friendships in the Aboriginal community. Indeed, in the 1990s Emily was an external student at the University of Tasmania studying Aboriginal Studies.

Emily Creighton never claimed any Aboriginality or Aboriginal value for her necklaces. However, when they were marketed this became confused, as there was a dependence upon the Aboriginality for such necklaces to gain currency in Tasmania. If there is any problem here, it rests with the institutions selling her work rather than her as the maker and also by a general lack of clarity in respect to cultural identity, and cultural property, on the part of the non-Aboriginal community in Tasmania.

The signification and authority of the maker is an issue in the context of contemporary politics and cultural authority. Emily Creighton is a recent example of a non-Aboriginal person making shell necklaces in Tasmania and a person whose work can be confused with Tasmanian Aboriginal production.

If personal signification and cultural authority is important in the way that it is in the artworld, then Emily Creighton's necklaces are problematic albeit through no fault of her own.