Merrepen Arts Seminar in Sydney

Please join us for a very special event to meet and greet the Merrepen Arts team and learn more about our beautiful and unique textile designs and printing. We'll share behind the scenes stories of the history of fabric printing in the community and multiple design collaborations with textile designer Bobbie Ruben and others. Bring your questions!

We'll print at least one length of the famous Crocodile Skin print by Aaron McTaggart on the Publisher tables. There might even be the chance for attendees to try their hand at screenprinting.

Below: printing in our workshop (before the recent flood).

About our designs

We have more than 30 outstanding textile designs that celebrate culture and daily life in Nauiyu (Daily River). The printed fabrics are highly sought after by creatives and used in many applications including clothing, homewares and interior decoration. They've been featured in exhibitions around Australia and the international exhibition Aboriginal Screen Printed Textiles from Australia's Top End curated by Dr Joanna Barrkman presented at the Fowler Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles.

Publisher Textiles

We are delighted to be hosted by Publisher Textiles. Mark and team have been huge supporters of Merrepen Arts for more than a decade. They hold a number of our screens/designs and print on demand. They printed Fog Dreaming by Marita Sambono (above) worn by Chloe Moo, made by Raw Cloth Darwin and winner of Melbourne Cup Fashions on the Field in 2013.

Publisher has been hosting fabric printing workshops featuring Fish Nets design by Kieren Karritpul - so they are the perfect hosts for our event.

We are excited to be visiting Sydney

Merrepen Arts will be making a rare visit to Sydney to attend a First Nations Fashion and Design Event - Reclamation - on Sunday 10th May. We are self-funding a to present 8 runway looks and this event will help with costs. The team will be Kieren Karritpul (Co-Manager and artist/award winning textile designer) and Felicity Wright (Mentor Manager) joined by Rodriguez Wilson.

Our situation at home

You may be aware that Nauiyu (Daly River) community recently experienced some major challenges with the flooding of our own print workshop, plus every single ground story home, clinic and school. At Merrepen Arts this hit very hard, we have to repair equipment, replace base cloth fabrics, screens, tools and stock destroyed in this catastrophic event. It's a huge undertaking. We are not able to return to the community at present due to lack of services and damage to housing, so community members have been evacuated to Darwin.

A crowdfunding campaign recently finished, however we welcome any support and it's possible to donate on this site.

Songlines Arts (Darwin) is hosting ticketing for this event, however all funds will go to Merrepen Arts.