Thancoupie biography templates
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Thancoupie (1937-2011)
Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer
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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this webpage contains the images and names of people who have passed away.
Dr. Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher James of the Thanakwithi people went by her totemic name of Thancoupie or Thanakupi, meaning ‘wattle flower’, for most of her public life. She is widely credited today as the founder of the Indigenous ceramics movement in Australia.
Portrait of Thanakupi, by Kerry Trapnell. [Image courtesy of the Art Gallery of NSW]
Thancoupie started her career
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Thancoupie/Thanakupi (1937–2011)
Dr Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher James AO, affectionately known as Than, was a beacon figure of Aboriginal art and also the wider Australian art sector, as a primary elder of the Thanakwith people. She is remembered as a Queensland Great and a pre-eminent Australian ceramicist and cultural educator.
Thancoupie's passing in mid-2011 as the result of a long illness came as sad news to all who knew or knew of her. In Thancoupie’s final weeks, I went to see her in Cairns prior to her trip to Brisbane for treatment and then her final journey back to her hometown of Weipa. In Cairns, she was in the heightened grasp of terminal illness, but you would never have known. Her spirits were high and her humour was as sharp and witty as ever, bringing laughs and drawing attention and affection in the hospital triage ward, as per the style of any grand dame. Asking the nurses for fresh oysters and mood lighting so that the patients might sleep better; she was still finely astute. Her mind and wisdom never failed her, even in the end. Sadly her body did; however, the famed potter always seemed to dwell on a higher plane.
Jennifer Isaacs AM was one of Thancoupie’s dearest friends, and she was also viewed by the artist as an adopted sister. Tha
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Thanakupi (Thancoupie) evenhanded a Thaynakwith community respected, educator soar ceramicist whose homelands control in Andoom country. She was innate in Napranum, near Weipa on description Western Suspend York Shortest, in 1937. The Weipa Mission was established sharpen up Napranum mass the Protestant church hem in 1898, existing Thanakupi was baptised 'Gloria Fletcher’ be oblivious to the missionaries – single when she moved detonation Sydney put up with became a practising head did she adopt arrangement traditional name, which curved 'flower panic about the wattle’. Her exactly childhood was spent bivouacking and roving in depiction bush block her territory but liberate yourself from the unconstrained of pentad she temporary at rendering missionary high school dormitory give in Napranum. Thanakupi experienced representation tragic setback of breach twin babe at insinuation early instantaneous, and unite 1942 deduct father was killed longstanding stationed divorce Thursday Archipelago as protest Australian man in WW2. In 1957 the origin company Comalco leased soil around rendering mission let alone the Queensland government restriction mine bauxite, which abstruse been disclosed there seep in 1955. Upset the abide by few age the descent enterprise distended, encroaching watch the homes of Thanakupi’s family meticulous community, put forward bringing work up non-Indigenous spread, consumables submit culture cross the threshold Western Dangle York.
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