Brian Robinson’s intricate linocuts are, like the tales of heroes and villains that inspire them, rich with myth and metaphor. But it’s not just the creation stories of his Torres Strait home or the legends of Ancient Greece that inflect Robinson’s multidisciplinary oeuvre. Look closely at his prints and you’ll spot the unmistakable iconography of pop culture: Renaissance figures rub shoulders with Astro Boy, stormtroopers from Star Wars are framed by ancient constellations and powerful warriors stand sentry near rows of Space Invaders. In this conversation, which has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity, Robinson connects the cultural threads that inform his artistic practice.

CARODY CULVER: When you were a kid, you were often creating things – sketching or painting or making. Were you always drawn to a career as an artist?

BRIAN ROBINSON: I think from day dot. I was that kid who would draw on pretty much all surfaces – I didn’t always stick to pieces of paper. I drew on the tabletop and the walls. I also used to build a lot with Lego bricks and make models out of cardboard. I’d pull apart remote-­controlled cars and try to hook them up to 240 volts… I can’t tell you how many times I got electrocuted doing that. I just have one of those curious minds that is never content with the norm.

CC: All in the pursuit of artistic greatness. You grew up on Waiben (Thursday Island) in the Torres Strait – can you tell me how your upbringing and cultural heritage have shaped your creative practice?

BR: Growing up on a small island surrounded by sea allowed me the freedom to explore. I was very rarely at home – I was always on my homemade push bike, cobbled together from other bikes, riding here, there and everywhere, a sketchbook in my backpack, a basketball stuffed into the fork of my bike. That’s how I spent a big chunk of my childhood when I wasn’t at school. I’d also listen to all the uncles and aunties yarn about what it was like when they grew up in the Torres Strait, fishing, diving, hunting, what it was like for them to go through certain initiations, particularly the males – from boyhood to manhood. These are the sort of stories that are probably more subconsciously imprinted on the brain – you don’t often think about it at the time, it’s only when you get a little bit older that you really take on a lot of those learnings and remember what your parents and your uncles and aunties and your grandparents taught you. So that’s where my early artistic development really started.

CC: You now work across all sorts of different mediums: printmaking, painting, sculpture, design. What sort of creative ideas and/or practical considerations determine which medium you’ll work in?

BR: I think the first medium I go to is relief prints, linocuts: drawing directly onto the blocks of vinyl then hand-carving them and pulling that first print. There’s always a wow moment when it [the print] comes off the press. The crisp lines, the glow of the white paper, the dense black, the smell of the ink…wonderful. But everything stems from my love of drawing – whether it’s drawing onto linoleum or drawing up a new sculpture on paper. For me, that’s the start of the process, so I very rarely see the drawing as the final artwork.

Generally, what I draw onto the lino block, I’ll carve. There might be a little bit of rubbing out of images just to compose the block or to make a leg, hand or arm look proportionate, or something like that. But it’s a process of drawing and then redrawing when it comes to lino. I’ll draw a number of elements over the block first and I’ll start to carve some of those elements. But during that process of carving and thinking about the overall theme or story within that work, I’ll then start to draw in other elements that connect with that main story. That’s why I look at doing large, two-­metre by one-­metre linocuts, because they give you quite a bit of room to play around with ideas – to push and pull elements, enlarge figures, add more detail…this is where the magic happens.

CC: Cultural mythology features strongly in your work – both Torres Strait Islander mythology and Greek mythology. Can you tell me about your interest in this area and how it feeds into your art?

BR: I call Aboriginal and Torres Strait mythology ‘ancestral narratives’ because there’s an element of truth to a lot of the stories about how certain landforms came to be, star patterns in the sky and so on. I also call them ‘ancestral narratives’ because they’re stories from my ancestors, and I encountered them by listening to aunties and uncles and grandparents talk about them. These yarns would often come when you were sitting in the dinghy cleaning the day’s catch, in between dives to catch crayfish, or on hunting expeditions.

When I got to high school, I started to rummage through the school library and I came across books on ’70s and ’80s subway graffiti art and subway culture. I also found books on Renaissance artists, and that’s probably what sparked my interest in the Renaissance figure and the human body – looking at the figure in the books and trying to replicate the anatomy of that figure. There were always fascinating stories connected to the figure. After a while, I realised that there were a number of similarities between Greek mythology and Torres Strait mythology. It’s a focal point, a connection point that I’ve been exploring over the past fifteen to twenty years.

With a lot of the tales there’s always love, loss, tragedy, war, shapeshifting spirit beings, vengeful spirits often leading to someone being transformed into a star and placed in the heavens. There’s one particular story about Tagai, one of the major star constellations in the Torres Strait. It is a story from Mer [Murray Island]. Tagai is a great fisherman and he has a crew of twelve Zugubal [powerful spiritual beings] in his boat. Towards the end of the story he kills them all during a fit of rage because they drink all of his water. He turns them into stars and places them in the Northern Hemisphere, in the constellations of Orion and Pleiades, and he himself becomes a massive star constellation in the Southern Hemisphere. Tagai is a major constellation that takes in Centaurus, Crux, Lupus, Corvus and Scorpio.

Others refer to the formation of islands, such as Gelam, a story from Moa [Banks Island]. Gelam becomes upset with his mother over food rations, so he decides to carve a wooden dugong and swim away from the island, leaving his mother, who turned to stone after crying in the sea. He forms the islands of Dauar and Waier, and later rests in the shallow water at Mer, eventually becoming a part of the island.

CC: Your recent exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery featured a large-­scale print that was inspired by constellations visible in the sky about the Torres Strait, and two of the artworks we’re reproducing in this edition, Constructing the Constellations and Mapping the Cosmos, also depict starry skies. Could you talk about the significance of these constellations in Torres Strait Islander culture?

BR: Constellations are major cultural, social and environmental indicators for all Torres Strait Island people. Star constellations set in motion certain activity that happens back on the islands over the period of a year – everything from the movement of certain land animals across the islands, certain sea creatures in the waters, mating seasons of animals, when to prepare your garden beds, when to plant your crops, when to harvest your crops, the approaching monsoon season – everything is contained in the stars. All of these indicators help sustain life in the Torres Strait.

CC: Pop culture is another key feature of your work, and in some of the prints we’re featuring in this edition readers can spot Miffy, Space Invaders, BB-­8, the Tardis, a pair of Nike Air Jordans and many more beloved characters and symbols. Can you tell me about the role this popular iconology plays in your creative process? 

BR: Even though I grew up on a small, remote island, I was still heavily influenced by television – particularly the sort of cartoons that would play on Saturday mornings, mornings before school, after school and so on. When it comes to DC and Marvel and all of those superheroes, for me that was ignited by my late grandfather Ali Drummond, my mother’s father, who had boxes of Phantom comics. Phantom was my early introduction to the strong, powerful male being who had supernatural strength and abilities. This also connects thematically with the warriors from Torres Strait mythology as well. 

The use of popular culture, I suppose, is a way of adding humour and contemporising my linocuts. People who know me know that I’m quite a jovial person, I love to laugh. I’m a bit of a prankster, I love to play tricks on people, I love distorting reality and I’m happy to be in that dream world where anything and everything is possible. All of that youthful energy goes into the works I create, and it’s those little pop cultural icons that really bring that element of play into each and every linocut print.