Shrek, Captain Cook and the stars: Welcome to Brian Robinson's multiverse

The work of Cairns-based Torres Strait Islander artist Brian Robinson is on show at Newcastle Art Gallery and Vivid Sydney. (Supplied: AGSA/Marinco Kojdanovski) Link copiedShareShare articleEvery night as he walks across the yard to his studio in Cairns, Torres Strait Islander artist Brian Robinson looks up at the star-filled sky. "All life, for me, starts off gazing at the cosmos," Robinson tells ABC Arts. This deep interest in cosmology forms the foundation of much of Robinson's art, currently the subject of a major survey at Newcastle Art Gallery. Robinson, a Maluyligal and Wuthathi man with Scottish and Filipino heritage born on Waiben (Thursday Island) in the Torres Strait, works across many mediums: illustration, printmaking, sculpture, animation and large public art installation. Brian Robinson incorporates sculptural elements into his linocut and vinylcut prints. (Supplied: Newcastle Art Gallery/Jedd Cranfield) The show's title, Multiverse, encapsulates the multilayered quality of Robinson's work, drawing as it does on a range of narrative traditions. "Often, I'll start with an Indigenous storytelling base, and then I'll add layers on top of that," he told ABC Radio National's Awaye!. Robinson is an artist who can work on a very small scale — designing the inaugural medallion for the Prime Minister's Prize for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledge Systems, for example — and the very large. He's known for his public art installations, including Woven Fish, a series of 2.5-metre tall sculptures commissioned for the 2003 redevelopment of Cairns Esplanade, and Citizens Gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, a six-metre polished stainless steel sculpture drawing on traditional reef creation stories. His work is also on show at Vivid Sydney, in the two-part Mythical Mashup: The Graphic Worlds of Brian Robinson at the National Maritime Museum. In one installation, Torres Strait motifs and pop culture icons engage in a Pac-Man-style battle on the museum rooftop. In another, LED-light figures standing on a pontoon on the harbour catch fish shaped like shoyu-tai (soy sauce containers) as a kraken's tentacles emerge from water. "The title Multiverse speaks about all of those different universes that I draw inspiration from for the work that I create," Robinson says. (Supplied: AGSA/Michael Jalaru Torres) Robinson is also a curator. In 2021, he worked with Newcastle Art Gallery to develop WARWAR, an exhibition of Torres Strait Islander art. "It was a landmark exhibition," Newcastle Art Gallery director Lauretta Morton says. "At the time … I kept saying, 'Can we have more of your prints in the show?' "And I remember him saying, 'Lauretta, it's not a Brian Robinson show.'" Five years later, that show — the gallery's first major solo exhibition since it reopened in March after a four-year refurbishment — has finally arrived. "It's been a long journey, obviously, with the expansion, but for us it was always a promise that we'd made to each other that we would do a major survey here," Morton says. In 2025, Robinson spent a two-week residency at the University of Newcastle producing a new work for Multiverse. Titled Abracadabra, the vinylcut print is full of "magic, mystery and the occasional science contraption", Robinson says. The artist conceived of the work on the long drive from Cairns to Rockhampton, where his work was part of a group exhibition, Maximum Madness: Art Inspired by Mad Max, at the local regional gallery in 2024. "I got out of the car and went up to my hotel room, and I wrote out exactly what I saw," he says. Robinson pictured a series of shelves holding a variety of weird and wonderful objects. Robinson's preoccupation with the magic of everyday life finds expression in Abracadabra, a work he created for the Multiverse show. (Supplied: Newcastle Art Gallery/Jedd Cranfield) The finished print comprises four individual panels, each measuring one metre by two metres, featuring hand-drawn designs that were then hand-carved and printed to paper. Many of the depicted objects are drawn from the University of Newcastle's scientific collection. Others, as in many of Robinson's works, come from traditional Torres Strait Islander culture, biblical stories and pop culture. In the top-right corner, for example, is the carapace of a hawksbill turtle, used to make traditional Torres Strait turtle shell masks. "You've got other pieces that are traditional charms used to bring the rains forth to water your gardens; other charms that are placed in gardens to promote growth of the crops," Robinson says. Keen-eyed viewers will spot Harry Potter's wand, Shrek's love potion, the Back to the Future flux capacitor and references to the Marvel universe alongside chess pieces, shrunken heads and light bulbs. Multiverse draws from the last 10 years of Robinson's career. (Pictured: Banks' bounty: Exotic cargo, 2022-24) (Supplied: Newcastle Art Gallery/Jedd Cranfield) In Abracadabra, Robi

Shrek, Captain Cook and the stars: Welcome to Brian Robinson's multiverse

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