Kuluban (Fruit order Bats) by Selina Nadjowh on Linen

Hand screen printed "Tuscany" linen (138cm wide).

This linen base cloth is White and is around 210 gsm in weight. It has a nice body, soft finish, and drapes well.

The print has been created with a dark to light emerald green colour fade.

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All our fabrics are designed and hand-printed by our members in our workshop in Gunbalanya in West Arnhem Land, NT, Australia.

The designer:
Selina comes from a family of art makers. Her father, Timothy Nabegeyo, is a well known senior man and painter and her mother, Audrey Nadjowh, is a senior fibre artist. Selina and her sister Lynne are known to make a combination of bark paintings with a woven pandanus frame – an artform unique to this Gunbalanya region.

The Design:
In this fabric design the artist has painted a colony of kuluban (fruit bats) hanging from the branches of a tree at night. It is yekke (the dry sesason) and many flowers are in bloom. Kuluban feed on flowers and, in turn, pythons including Nawuran (Oenpelli pythons) feed on the bats. Kuluban are also a food source for the Indigenous people of Northern Australia although to Western tastes the flesh is very gamey and pungent. When particular varieties of blossom come into order season the diet of the bat changes the degree of sweetness in the flesh of the bat itself. They are silent in flight but can be heard feeding at night in the trees and are raucous as they roost in the mornings. Kuluban is the generic word for fruit bats, also known as flying foxes because of their scent, but also specifically refers to the black flying fox (Pteropus alecto).