For renowned Girramay, Yidinji and Kuku Yalanji artist Tony Albert, curating this year’s free nightly public art event Badu Gili: Healing Spirit is a role more than two decades in the making.
“Twenty years on, I really feel a great sense of responsibility in giving back to the community,” Albert tells Broadsheet. “I was supported so greatly as a young artist by incredible senior artists and the proppaNOW Collective [a Queensland-based grouping of First Nations artists including Albert, Vernon Ah Kee, Richard Bell and others].”
The inaugural Fondation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain First Nations Curatorial Fellow, Albert also worked on Badu Gili’s previous instalment, Celestial (2023), which explored star navigation and sky mapping through First Nations perspectives. The latest chapter focuses on healing: connection to Country, storytelling through songs and ceremonies, and the cultural meeting points of saltwater from La Perouse and freshwater from the Amazon rainforest.
The six-minute projection on the Opera House’s eastern Bennelong sails features the work of Bidjigal artist and elder Esme Timbery and her children: shellwork artist Marilyn Russell, and weaver and linocut artist Steven Russell. Also featured is artist Joseca Mokahesi Yanomami, believed to be the first of the Amazonian Yanomami peoples from Brazil to ever visit Australia.
Albert remembers a pivotal moment in 2010 that led to many of his future artistic collaborations. He was visiting Arrernte and Kalkadoon curator Hetti Perkins in Sydney when she got an important phone call. “[Hetti] got off the phone and said, ‘Quick, we’ve got to go down to La Perouse. Aunty Esme needs some shells!’ I was really confused. Who is Aunty Esme? Why does she need shells?”
Collecting shells along the bay that day became one of Albert’s core memories of his Sydney visit – and it’s how he learned about the work of Marilyn and Steven Russell, whom he met and stayed in touch with.
“For so many years, shellwork was reduced to something less than art, seen as more like craft or souvenir objects,” he says. “We see them now represented within institutional collections, alongside incredible works by artists worldwide.” This year’s Badu Gili marks the first time these works will become live projections for a public audience.
“We want to celebrate coming together and supporting each other [as artists], and looking at difference as something that can bring us together rather than pulling us apart.”
Marilyn and Steven Russell’s section of the night-time projection is inspired by the shells of La Perouse. The animated imagery weaves in fish and fishnets, families spending time by the beach, whales, and the appearance of their mother, Esme, in the night sky.
“Seeing the entire Opera House covered in animated shells – there was an audible gasp in the crowd,” Albert says, recalling the work’s opening night. “It was almost like the pinnacle of what this moment would have represented in Esme’s life. And it was a special moment for everyone who knew her. It really felt like we were witnessing a piece of history.”
Mokahesi Yanomami, meanwhile, works with pencil on paper. His work explores Yanomami cosmology and shamanistic rituals, depicting people turning into animals in the rainforest.
“He’s never had access to [traditional art materials] and actually started making art on leaves.”
Artworks like these, Albert says, are becoming harder to create in the face of the climate crisis. “With the closing in and deforestation of the rainforest, and the effects of colonisation in Australia, these [natural materials] that were once prolific within communities are now fragile, rare and sacred.”
Badu Gili represents a valuable opportunity to witness them.
“As a curator, it’s a blessing to be able to work with people with this intrinsic knowledge of who they are, their cultural connections and traditions, and the new challenges they face.
“Their stories and imagery command attention, and they make visible these groups of people that remain very invisible within society and actually need a lot more amplification to reach wider audiences.”
Through the support of Fondation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain, Biennale of Sydney and Sydney Opera House, Albert has been able to access these bodies of work and create new ways for them to exist in the public realm. “Being their inaugural fellow, what the foundation can offer is exceptional. The fact that they’re looking to Australia and First Nations Australian art in particular means they’re expanding their focus. They see real relevance and resonance coming from Australia.”
As an artist, he’s also excited to see what might be possible for future generations of curators. “I believe there are great opportunities to have Indigenous staff members ingrained within institutions. [For them] to be this conduit between broader teams, venues and institutions. To be able to support artists in presenting the absolute best work possible.”
For now, Albert says he hopes this chapter of Badu Gili will stretch peoples’ imaginations and understanding.
“I do see this big push coming out of Australia to the rest of the world in terms of the presence of First Nations art. We fought really hard to be included within institutions and to look at these ideas of decolonising and indigenising space. My hope and dream is that more people can get opportunities to see art like this in the future because of that.”
Badu Gili: Healing Spirit runs every night, six times after sunset, for a full year from December 13, 2024.
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Cartier.
