Opera House the frame for Badu Gili indigenous art

Paintings by indigenous artists are to be displayed on the sails of the Sydney Opera House.

An artwork by Mervyn Rubuntja is projected onto the Sydney Opera House sails. Picture: Daniel Boud.

Paintings, prints and even ceramics by indigenous artists are to be displayed on what has been called the world’s greatest “art gallery”, with images of the artworks beamed on to the sails of the Sydney Opera House.

The outdoor exhibition called Badu Gili started last year and has attracted 160,000 visitors.

Six artists have been selected for a second iteration of Badu Gili, which begins at sunset today and continues with a nightly display on the eastern side of the Bennelong Restaurant.

Rhoda Roberts, head of First Nations programming at the Opera House, said Badu Gili was a showcase of indigenous art styles from across the country.

Artists selected for 2018 include Mervyn Rubuntja, whose watercolours of the McDonnell Ranges follow in the tradition of Albert Namatjira, and Aiona Tala Gaidan from Badu Island in the Torres Strait, who works with the island’s distinctive style of linocut prints. The images have been animated and slightly theatricalised for the projections, Roberts said, so that the ancestor crocodile Baru in a bark painting by Djambawa Marawili will appear to thrash across the Opera House sails. “The artists are blown away by it,” she said of results. “They trust us with their work and have the belief that we are going to do the right thing … It’s very hard when you are working with traditional works that are telling ­seriously old stories.”

Other featured artists are Mabel Juli, who paints with ochres in the East Kimberley style, ceramic artist Penny Evans from northern NSW, and Patricia Ansell Dodds, a Central Arrernte and Mudburra elder whose paintings represent her initiation back into her community.