YELLOW BUS EXHIBITION SHARES YINDJIBARNDI CULTURE IN WALYALUP

An exhibition housed in a yellow bus that tells a story of Yindjibarndi culture is on display until Sunday at the Fremantle Biennale in Walyalup.

The project focuses on the childhood and memories of Yindjibarndi woman Lorraine Coppin.

The audio-visual display is a collaboration with WA artist Andrew Sunley-Smith. 

Ms Coppin said it was inspired by a yellow bus that would pick up community members from Roebourne in the 1970s and take them on cultural learning trips to Yindjibarndi ngurra. 

“Everytime I looked forward to seeing the bus, it reminds me of being with the elders, she said.

“We’re going to fun places, swimming, fishing and being with my friends, just that united family feeling.”

Ms Coppin has fond memories of when she would travel on the bus with her elders.

“ I was sitting in the bus and I remember my great grandmother, Mabel Albert, she was beside me. She had this thumb, and when she was a teenager it got cut off.

Everytime I used to go to sleep I used to grab that thumb and rub it to go to sleep.”

At that time, the bus jerked and braked and stopped. I got a fright. Then all of a sudden, smoke was in the bus. On the bus, it has these old windows and I saw this big old fellah, he was a really big bloke trying to climb through that window …everytime I think of the bus, that’s a funny story for me.

You keep laughing because that image is always there. ‘How can you get through’, Ms Coppin laughed, ‘we’re the little ones.”

The exhibition is on until Sunday at Bathers Beach, Perth between 10-5pm for the next three days.