These are the designs and stories we live by...
Darrell Sibosado, 2019
The story of Aalingoon, the Rainbow Serpent, is one of the most important of all Bard creation stories. Each full moon, when it is time for Aalingoon to shed its skin, it does so by resting on the surface of the ocean and dropping and scattering scales, which become the pearl shells found in the waters that surround the Dampier Peninsula. These shells have been and continue to be used by Bard carvers who incise and ochre the shells with designs and stories, which have long been associated with the Sibosado family. Some of these designs are Undoord (Mating Turtles) and Minnimb (Humpback Whale) as well as the design for Aalingoon itself. These pearl shells, once carved, are known as riji.
When Darrell Sibosado was a young boy in Lombadina, north of Broome on the Dampier Peninsula, his 'uncle', a renowned riji carver known now to Darrell as A.T., drew the Aalingoon design into the Lombadina sand. He spoke to Darrell about the design and the importance Aalingoon has for Bard people. Without Aalingoon there would be no other lore. No shells to carve. No shells to incorporate into Bard ceremony. From Aalingoon come the stories that live among Darrell and his community.
That day with A.T. has remained with Darrell and continues to play an important role in his life. It has become the blueprint' of how he lives his life and how his creative output is informed. Darrell has always had the urge to experiment with different materials to re-create and represent riji designs as well as other designs on a larger scale. In the early 2000s he painted a large Minnimb on to the gallery wall of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative in Sydney as part of a group exhibition. Then in 2014 he created ten riji designs, including Minnimb and Undoord, as etchings at Cicada Press at the Faculty of Art & Design at the University of NSW, Sydney.
These traditional stories and designs have proven to be a continued source of inspiration for Darrell, who translates them from their original forms on riji into more and more elaborate mediums. These designs are written in a language that 'originated from my home country and in creating these works I am sharing that language with others'.
Darrell's aim in his practice is to make work that is 'more tactile and more sculptural' than traditional riji. Such was the case with the work he produced for North by East West: Re-igniting a cultural connection through pearl shell, at Cairns Art Gallery as part of the 2018 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair, where he shaped pearl shell, ebony and dugong bone to form the design rather than using the materials as the canvas on which to apply the design.
In early 2019, for the Desert River Sea exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Darrell re-created Minnimb, Undoord and, for the first time, Aalingoon as large sculptural works using the medium of Corten steel. And for Tarnanthi 2019, he has presented these three works as well as a newly commissioned and considerably larger Minnimb. As a contemporary Bard man who embodies the Aalingoon creation stories, Darrell has successfully adapted these stories into the language of contemporary art, creating sculptural forms that are informed from a Bard traditional position.
Darrell Sibosado, Bard people, Western Australia born 1966, Port Hedland, Western Australia
Aalingoon (Rainbow Serpent) three works, 2019, corten steel, 550 x 300 cm (overall), fabricators: reSPOKE, Perth
Credit Darrell Sibosado
Photo: Bo Wong/ Art Gallery of Western Australia
Footnotes:
- Darrell Sibosado, in conversation with Tess Allas, 2019.
- Ibid.
- COR-TEN is a trademark of the United States Steel Corporation
