Lighting of the Sails

Yarrkalpa - Hunting Ground, 2021 by the Martu Artists and Curiious with soundtrack by Electric Fields and Martu Artists (Inspired by Yarrkalpa – Always Walking Country 2014)

‘Yarrkalpa – Hunting Ground, Parnngurr Area’ by Janice Yuwali Nixon (dec), Kumpaya Girgirba, Nancy Kanu Taylor (dec), Ngamaru Bidu, Nola Ngalanka Taylor, Reena Rogers, Thelma Judson & Yikartu Bumba, 2013.

Each year an internationally-renowned artist is commissioned to create an original artwork for projection onto the Sydney Opera House that captures the spirit of the iconic landmark recognised as the cultural epicentre of Australia.

Known as Lighting of the Sails, this year Sydney-based creative technologists Curiious will bring to life the stunning Martumili collective painting Yarrkalpa - Hunting Ground, Parnngurr Area 2013 across the spectacular sails, extending the Martu Artists’ stories beyond the walls of a gallery.

Yarrkalpa - Hunting Ground is a visually striking and complex painting, brimming with vibrant colour and energy, which depicts the Parnngurr community and surrounding landscape. It represents an intimate connection with country, cataloguing seasons, traditional burning practices and regrowth, hunting and resources, as well as abstracted ancestral stories.

The Sydney Opera House is the perfect canvas on which to share the Martu’s stories with Sydneysiders and visitors, and an ideal moment in time to offer a new perspective into ancestral practices and knowledge of Country.

This new animated artwork will celebrate the Martu's intimate knowledge of the land and explore the language and the development of the painting itself. Curiious utilises a vast range of techniques to create a new perspective, from modern technologies to capturing organic, physical textures and high-resolution scans of the artwork. This creates a seamless connection between the tactile painting and the digital exploration.

This is the second collaboration with First Nations artists for Lighting of the Sails.

The audio for this installation will be available on Cinewav. Before you arrive at Vivid Sydney, download the Cinewav app, get your audio ticket and press PLAY. More information on how Cinewav works can be found here.