04-06-2025
Bangarra's new work Illume draws on the traditional Bardi and Jawi practice of pearl shell-carving
Darrell Sibosado and his brothers carve guan (mother of pearl shells) in the same shed once used by their father and uncles.
It's a shed in Djarindjin/Lombadina on Western Australia's Dampier Peninsula — at the site of the mission where Sibosado grew up, which ran from 1909 until the 60s.
"When the mission closed, we took over a lot of the infrastructure," the Goolarrgon Bard man tells ABC Radio National's Awaye!.
From his Old People, he learnt about carving, stories and symbols, which allowed Sibosado to link the traditional art-making practice of rjij (pearl shell carving) to his contemporary installation works using metal and light.
With a maze of lines that have been carved into the guan and inlaid with ochre, riji represents the scales shed by Aalingoon (the Rainbow Serpent) as he rests on the ocean surface, containing traditional knowledge and beliefs.
Where Sibosado once carved the geometric design, he now re-creates those same symbols as monochromatic installations of epic proportions made with metal and LED tubes.
"Even though [our symbols and motifs] are ancient, for the rest of the world I guess they seem so new and strange, [but] they've been around for thousands of years," Sibosado says.
"What I'm trying to do really, in my practice, is just reintroduce this [visual] language.
"The symbols I use — the very traditional ones — they're the ones that have been passed down to me and my brothers by a particular uncle, who was a very senior loreman in our clan, the Goolarrgon clan."
His carving and installation works have gained national and international recognition, in major exhibitions including the Desert River Sea: Portraits of the Kimberley (2019), the National Indigenous Art Triennial (2022) and Ever Present (2023).
Now, Sibosado is working with Indigenous contemporary dance company Bangarra Dance Theatre to create a new full-length choreographic work, Illume, which opens this week in Sydney, ahead of a national tour.
Sibosado lived in Sydney for around 30 years, during which time he worked to support other visual artists as they developed their practice. It wasn't until he moved home to Western Australia 10 years ago that Sibosado felt ready to focus on his own work.
"I'd done small things, and I was always drawing and stuff like that, but that would be always stashed away in a drawer," he says.
"Going back home on Country, a lot of that stuff just fell away, and it opened up space for me to focus, and for the information, my own information from my people, my ancestors to get back in."
For Bardi and Jawi people, connecting with Country in this way is "Ngarrgidj Morr" (the proper path to follow).
Mirning choreographer and Bangarra's artistic director, Frances Rings, has certainly "followed the proper path" in her collaboration with Sibosado. It took several years for her to convince the artist to work with her to translate his art into choreography.
"It was difficult for me to see how I was going to fit with Bangarra and how Bangarra was going to fit with me, but it seems to have just happened pretty organically," Sibosado says.
"I don't know any other company that [collaborates like Bangarra], that goes through this whole process, which is like all our traditional protocols … It put me at ease."
By intersecting their practices of choreographic and visual art perspectives in Illume, Rings and Sibosado hope to bridge the physical and spiritual worlds to convey complex themes about light, culture and environmental issues.
Told in nine sections, Illume is an examination of artificial light pollution and the way in which it disrupts First Nations peoples' connection to sky country.
With vast troves of knowledge held in constellations, light pollution limits our ability to share celestial knowledge and skylore, regarding everything from navigation, to when to seed and harvest food, to the best time to fish.
Every aspect of Illume's design — the lighting, the costumes, the music and the set — has been overseen by Sibosado to ensure the work embodies his community and Goolarrgon Country.
A self-confessed perfectionist, Sibosado says the collaboration has eased his biggest concern: that his work might be "overshadowed" by the production, or will "look like something stuck up on a wall".
Rings was equally concerned about ensuring Sibosado's work shines throughout all the production and design elements.
"Every day there's a lot of pressure to uphold that and to meet that expectation," she says.
"Darrell is so generous, and his community have also been so open and generously sharing with us … I hope that they feel that sense of collaboration when they sit in the theatre, and they see just the incredible amount of work that everyone's put into this."
Rings has wanted to collaborate with Sibosado since she met him while they were both studying at NAISDA Dance College in 1988.
In 2023, she took on the top job at Bangarra, and one of her first ideas to do something new and different was to draw on Indigenous art as inspiration.
That led her back to Sibosado, whose work she thinks "belongs in the theatre" because of the way it captures the vast scale and piercing light of his Country.
Rings even sees an echo of the "rich and saturated" colours of the red pindan soil and "indescribable blue" of the sea, despite Sibosado's tendency to work in monochromatics.
"Darrell's work is very monochrome, but there's a power, and there is a sense of something that is not just on the wall, but it's an energy and a feeling that it gives you, and that's really rare," she says.
In bringing his work to the stage, Sibosado has thought a lot about that sense of travelling backwards in time — while staying firmly situated in the present.
"I've moved into [working with] light now because I'm always trying to capture the iridescence of pearl shell, to honour pearl shell … [Adaptation] doesn't diminish your authenticity or your connection to your traditions," he says.
"Our ancestors and our Elders are expecting us to move in this world, and maintain your solid roots and your solid base and let that guide you.
"But we have to be able to move in this world."
Illume is at Sydney Opera House from June 4-14, before touring to Perth, Albany, Canberra, Brisbane, Darwin and Melbourne.
