Dylan Sarra

Artist Dylan Sarra was fated to be a teller of stories revolving around his family and culture. Yet only in his forties did he find his way to art-making and the understanding that his work could tell important stories, lighting a fire that illuminates his first solo exhibition Embers of Heritage at Mitchell Fine Art.

As for so many, making art is a positive childhood memory for Taribelang and Gooreng Gooreng artist Dylan Sarra. Sarra was born in Bundaberg, central Queensland, went to school in Gladstone, and recalls “bouncing between those two places” during his early life. One morning at kindergarten he was invited by the teacher to create a picture. “The praise the teacher gave me was something that I never ever forgot. I felt on top of the world; it was a light bulb moment.”

He came to Brisbane in his late teens, in search of broader horizons than Gladstone’s industrial base could offer. He worked in construction for a while, “always looking for something creative to bring into it.” An opening at the school his children attended saw him begin working as an Indigenous teacher aide, kindling his interest in education.

“That early memory underpins the work that I do now outside my fine arts practice. I work with kindy kids, educating teachers too about First Nations culture and the importance of people and place.”

Yet becoming an artist was almost sheer serendipity. His job at the local school fell victim to a funding shortfall. When a Centrelink staffer enquired about his interests, he mentioned art although he had long disregarded its ability to be an employment option.

“It just happened that an email had come to her with an invitation to Indigenous people to apply to attend an artists’ camp on Stradbroke Island. She said, ‘You might be interested in this?’ And the lead artist facilitator was Judy Watson.”

“I was so excited by being in that environment and surrounded by people like Judy. I got to the end of it, and Judy pulled me to the side and said, ‘Have you thought about going back to school?’ She suggested I consider Griffith University’s contemporary Indigenous art program. University was an absolute game changer.”

As a mature age student, Dylan remembers quickly feeling that art school was where he was meant to be, however, “I had other things going on as well to earn money for my family; I was tapping in and out. There was a moment where we had to explore our identity as part of the course. We visited the Queensland Museum, where they showed us artefacts from our region. For me, they brought out four boomerangs, and one of the boomerangs was this unique shape. The moment I held the object, it was like a lightning bolt.”

“My great-grandfather was initiated as a Bunda man, and he had scarification marks the shape of this boomerang on his chest to signify that. Another part of our background story is a conversation . . . when I was quite young, about the removal of the Burnett River petroglyphs. These sandstone rocks are covered in Aboriginal carvings but were cut up into ninety-four pieces and removed by the state government in the early 1970s—without any consultation. They were making way for agriculture in the Bundaberg region.”

Holding the boomerang at the Queensland Museum, Dylan knew what he had to do, with a sudden awareness of the stories he wanted to tell. He graduated from Griffith University’s contemporary Australian Indigenous art course in 2022 and went straight on to honours in 2023. “I have just been going at one hundred miles an hour since then.”

Dylan’s first commercial solo exhibition has recently opened at Mitchell Fine Art in Brisbane. Its variety of media describes the breadth of his interests. While he majored in print at university, he also learnt drawing, photography, sculpture, and painting. “For me, the focus is not necessarily the medium but the story I want to tell. I take my time to develop and experiment with work that I feel will suit that story.”

Carvings, photographs, and drawings stimulated by the Burnett River petroglyphs were explored by doing rubbings of the rocks. “The state of many of the rocks mean that the carvings are barely visible. So, I wrapped them in muslin. When I started to rub my hands over the surface, it wasn’t about what I could see anymore—it was about what I could feel. I used charcoal to rub over the muslin, bringing the markings to the surface. And that was magical. I studied the marks, thinking about the way the rocks were made. I made my own tools and got my own sandstone and recreated the methodology.

The theme of his Embers of Heritage exhibition is fire, with an exploration of its ability to transform and renew. For director Mike Mitchell, “This first show is an introduction to Dylan and a little bit of his story. It is the first paragraph of the first chapter, and each subsequent exhibition is going to be another step on the journey of the story that he wants to tell.”

It includes a painting by Dylan’s Aboriginal grandmother of a cane fire in central Queensland, which captures the explosive qualities in these fires, Dylan’s shields with carvings of icons from the petroglyphs, sculpture in wood from burnt out trees, paintings, and glass tipped spears. Artefacts referring to the Burnett River petroglyphs use recreations of their symbols which Dylan has isolated. “There’s more work to be done in terms of what they were and how they sat in context with other symbols.”

Dylan’s research into this subject has earnt him a First Nations Fellowship with the Queensland Museum to research the petroglyphs. “Not all the stones have been recovered although most are accounted for. It’s my hope that the work I have been doing assists with the recovery and repatriation process by creating awareness.”

Mike Mitchell has been watching Dylan’s work since his graduate exhibition in 2022. He believes that “the maturity in what he’s doing belies the shortness of his art career. These ideas have been a long-time gestating. It’s an acknowledgement of history and what it’s contributed to where we are as a country today.”

Less than three years into his art career, Dylan has achieved finalist status at the prestigious National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Art Awards four times but has his eye on the prize: “I want to win it one day,” he said. His trajectory has been rapid, but Mike Mitchell believes his career is likely to be a slow steady burn.

This article was originally published in Artist Profile, issue 69

EXHIBITION
Dylan Sarra: Embers of Heritage
29 October – 14 December 2024
Mitchell Fine Art, Brisbane