From fine art to fashion design, the drive to create manifests in many forms – it helps us make sense of the world across disciplines, borders and backgrounds.
For Ilma Ali, a fine artist and multi-disciplinary designer from Hames Sharley’s Darwin studio, design is embedded in her creative pursuits and has become a force for good that underpins significant moments in her life.
“I think some people just have that need to do something creative and constantly exercise that part of the brain. I feel that way often!” she laughs.
She grew up as a child of the world as her parents – rural doctors – moved their family across oceans, spending eight years in Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, seven years in Brunei and finally Malaysia. In each new place, she developed a lifelong passion for nature through drawing and sketching, practising shading, light and colour in everything from fruit to household objects.
She later moved to Melbourne and completed her Masters of Architecture at RMIT, before working in top-tier design practices in Australia and globally, building a body of work infused with her bold and experimental approach.
“Travelling gives great exposure and contributes greatly to design, enabling you to expand because of what you’re seeing and experiencing. I am naturally quite bold in my approach and trust my intuition. This usually creates an outcome with an element of surprise,” Ilma says.
Designing a new life in Darwin
This was put to the test when the pandemic arrived. Her world turned upside down after making a split-second decision to move to Darwin to be with her parents after a flight to begin a new life in Amsterdam was suddenly cancelled.
Bright, colourful tropical landscapes replaced the more familiar dark grey skies. She responded immediately by picking up her paintbrushes, taking her tools outside and returning to her first love of painting, deeply inspired by the territory, the sky, the waters and all the rich and diverse life within it.
In 2021, her worlds of painting, design and fashion collided spectacularly. Local galleries were fast running out of artists, due to lockdowns and difficulties travelling to Darwin, and suddenly there were more blank walls than red dots.
“The galleries began reaching out to artists and I just started exhibiting. People really started to like my art and said they’d love to see my work on fabric.”
After a prophetic dream where she imagined her work on fashion pieces and then on the runway, she made it happen. She leveraged her Melbourne fashion connections and forged ahead with her first collection alongside fashion designer Tamara Leacock.
The collection featured Ilma’s ‘Microcosm’ artwork, which explores intricate patterns of regularity and irregularity in the natural world, from lotus leaves and shells to delicate eucalyptus and bromeliad plants.
“I started printing my artworks into textiles and Tamara transformed the work and made it an amazing collection, which we independently ran. We had it at the Trader Bar in Darwin, as a kind of fashion flashmob, so spectators would be standing amongst a crowd and then the fashion show would suddenly happen around them. It was experimental and fun!” she says.
Creating for a purpose
Her vision to grow Darwin into a fashion hub by celebrating art, fashion and creativity has now turned into yearly textile collections showcasing her wearable art collections on independent fashion runways.
And they’ve become much more than fashion. In 2022, her ‘Veins’ collection with fashion designer Olga Bryukhovets celebrated a new partnership with Melaleuca Australia, a Darwin not-for-profit organisation that supports refugee and migrant women, who also modelled in the show. Furthermore, Ilma’s work supports a passion project in her father’s hometown of Mawanella, Sri Lanka, to provide meals for school kids and to help build a school there with her family.
It was also a collaboration with Melaleuca Australia that won the EmAGN Project award at the recent Northern Territory 2024 AIA awards, due to the depth of Ilma’s contribution.
“As designers we have the power to make a change, which is a big responsibility that I love and appreciate. We get to be creative, but be creative for a purpose,” she says.
As project leader, Ilma led the design, construction and successful completion of a new butterfly shade roof structure for the existing courtyard within Melaleuca’s building. Her professionalism, leadership and ownership of the entire project were highlighted by the jurors. Transcending its primary function of providing shade, the structure fosters community engagement which provides a sustainable revenue source for Melaleuca throughout the year.
While she is immensely grateful for the recognition, the spotlight doesn’t come naturally to her. However, she realises the strength of her platform to champion young people and women in the design industry to step up and speak out.
“When I received the EmAGN award, I was reminiscing with a friend about the hardships and time it has taken to get to where I am today,” she says.
“It’s not about the individual recognition, it’s more the massive demographic of people I represent and I hope it helps motivate them to take up similar space.”
For now, she’s enjoying some of the simpler things in life, including family, having birds and bush turkeys outside her window, exploring how to make her work more sustainable and her other lifelong passion – dancing tango.
“Darwin is an incredible place, I am always humbled by the room we’ve got to grow and learn. I’ve definitely found my place here,” Ilma says.
