This immersive three channel video and sound installation was developed from Dalisa Pigram’s solo performance of the same name. It was first realised in 2013 with Marrugeku – the intercultural
dance company based between Sydney and Broome – where Pigram is choreographer and co-artistic director alongside director and dramaturg Rachael Swain. The screen iteration of “Gudirr Gudirr” was shot on location at Broome in 2019, directed by Queensland-based visual artist Vernon Ah Kee, who brings his particular aesthetic qualities of text-based imagery, portraiture and hand-held footage, natural extensions of the stripped back set design and video installation he created for the original stage production.

Richly layered and deeply personal, in “Gudirr Gudirr”, Pigram’s dynamic movement and spoken word in Yawaru, English and the local vernacular of Broome Aboriginal/English represents an embodiment of the past, encounter with the present and redetermining of the future.

Commissioned by Carriageworks and Marrugeku for The National 2021: New Australian Art.