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Brian Robinson
The league of extraordinary gentlemen- the curse of Cortez
2023
Lino print, 10000mm x 20000mm
Artist information
b. 1973 (Maluyligal and Wuthathi)
Raised on Waiben (Thursday Island) with Maluyligal and Wuthathi cultural heritage, Robinson is a versatile contemporary artist whose work spans painting, printmaking, sculpture, and design. His graphic style blends his Torres Strait Islander heritage with a passion for experimentation, exploring both theoretical approaches and mediums, and blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.
Artwork information
I swear to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice, in all their forms, and my sons and their sons, shall follow me (Oath of the Skull).
A league of extraordinary gentlemen: The curse of Cortez conjures up tales of swashbuckling piracy and high seas adventures that could easily be interpretated as episodes from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, the omnibus of Adventures in Deep Dark Africa, an Indiana Jones movie or an Ion Idriess novel. It is in fact an artwork that is centred around the Phantom, the fictional, purple skin-tight costumed crime-fighter who lives in the African country of Bangalla.
Like the ancestral narratives of Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait), the island dotted intricate waterway between Naigai Dagam Dhawdhay and Zei Dagam Dhawdhay, which were inspired by spiritual, cultural and natural phenomena, the Phantom, conceived by Lee Falk’s life-long fascination with King Arthur, Zorro and Tarzan resonates these same qualities, even though they’re worlds’ apart.
The attraction to this purple superhero was immediate as I stumbled across boxes of phantom comics in my athe’s (Ali Mohummad Drummond) house on Waiben as a child. One could almost hear the distant drumming that echoed from the illustrated pages of each graphic novel, as though deliberately drawn there by the Phantom himself.
A league of extraordinary gentlemen: The curse of Cortez takes the viewer on another spellbound mystery, full of ancient cartographic sea monsters, masked figures that lurk in the jungle, the spoils of pearling and chests full of heathen-god-cursed Aztec gold coins to fuel everyone’s greed.
A league of extraordinary gentlemen: The curse of Cortez pays homage to the long line of strong and powerful ancestors from the Drummond, Villaflor, Pablo, Malay, Assacruz, Arboleda, Robinson and Salmon families that are connected to the artist through blood and kinship, ethnicities that span the globe and continue to develop and inspire, much like the Ghost who walks himself.