The first intake of artists to be commissioned by the Fondation Cartier for the biennale includes a strong contingent of local First Nations artists... (Tony) Albert is genuinely inspired - even slightly awed - by the work of the artists in the first intake.
Take for example the neon scultpures by Darrell Sibosado, which were installed in the newly repurposed White Bay Power Station in Sydney's inner west. These neons read like encoded messages that are at once futuristic and ancestral. Deceptively simple, the glyphs are based on the riji, a catalogue of designs drawn from the Bard aesthetic tradition of inciding pearl shell to which Sibosado in heir. Writ large, the light sculptures project their message in a coded visual language or semaphore for which - for profound and mysterious is being communicated in these intersecting, rectilinear lines. As suggestive as a crucifix, these icons of Bard culture are visual stories deeply embedded in a system of belief.
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