The artworks commissioned for Cross River Rail are significant, unique, true to the artists’ vision, future-oriented, and about topics of interest and meaning to people.
Megan Cope (Quandamooka)
Tamika Grant-Iramu (Torres Strait Islander)
D Harding (Bidjara/Ghungalu/Garingbal)
Jennifer Herd (Mbabaram)
Naomi Hobson (Kaantju/Umpila)
Gordon Hookey (Waanyi)
Dylan Mooney (Yuwi/Torres Strait Islander/South Sea Islander)
Jody Rallah (Biri Gubba/Yuggera/Warangu)
Brian Robinson (Waiben)
Teho Ropeyarn (Angkamuthi and Yadhaykana/Woppaburrapeople/Batchulla)
Paula Savage (Serganilgal, Moa Island, Kaurareg Nation of Muralag and Kiriri)
Judy Watson (Waanyi)
Location Cross River Rail, Brisbane
CommissionerCross River Rail and Rail, Integration and Systems, Brisbane
ArchitectsHassell
CuratorBarbara Flynn, Art Advisor
Downloads
Unlike other rail projects in the capital cities that might commission a single artist or pair of artists to address each station of the line, in this project, it was exciting to commission three or four artists at every station and to afford the public the opportunity to see relationships among their works.
There were many unusual aspects of this project. Work was started early; the artists are all Queensland Aboriginal artists – who are among Australia's most singular artists; and we proceeded to allow the artists to ‘own’ their projects, in other words, to determine them, with minimal interference by us non-artists.
Selected artist Teho Ropeyarn
Teho Ropeyarn is a man of the Angkamuthi and Yadhaykana clans of the Injinoo community, Cape York Peninsula, who was born in 1988 at Mount Isa. The artist is a proficient printmaker, a medium that requires an exactitude and sensitivity of line. He is also a dedicated community member, undertaking research and liaising with elders to capture and record the stories, totems and environment of Injinoo. One example is his series Ayuva Meenha (2020), which was the culmination of a process of gathering the traditional stories shared by the late Reverend Ama Mary Eseli and other knowledge holders over a three-year period. As Ropeyarn has said: ‘It is important that cultural knowledge is passed down from our Elders and that they teach language, tribal stories, art, dancing and cultural beliefs to the next generation to carry on the 40,000+ years-old ancient culture we breathe today … We are in an age where culture and grass roots knowledge is slowly deteriorating due to Elders passing … Practising art is one way of maintaining and developing culture and has always been a part of Aboriginal culture. Through this tradition, my culture will be preserved for years to come.’1
Holding onto and passing on knowledge is the idea underlying Ropeyarn’s art and everything he does. Community elders are one inspiration, and Torres Strait Island printmakers are another; both have guided the artist to find his preferred medium of expression in printmaking.
Ropeyarn’s works are bold and unusually large for prints, and they display the sort of strong imagery that will hold the attention of people as they ride the escalators at the centre of the VT shaft glazed walls. The strong lines and stark contrasts of Ropeyarn’s prints will translate powerfully to the scale of these glazed walls. As commanding as they are, forms and symbols communicate in a quiet voice. In this way, Ropeyarn’s art is well aligned with the Boggo Road location, which is expected to have the mildest footfall of all the stations.
The commitment to community that binds all the proposed artists together underlies Ropeyarn’s art. The work Lukuyn – Apudthama (2017), for example, represents the four clans that came together in the 1900s at Injinoo – the Angkamuthi, the Yadhaykana, the Atambaya and the Gudang. It is believed to be the only recorded reconciliation movement in early Australian history, when clans came together to live as one, ending tribal conflicts. Ropeyarn’s artworks represent his own exceptional achievement in printmaking while benefiting his people by telling their stories.
View the 3D visualisation of Ropeyarn’s work, Ataga Ulumu (Red clay/road) for the east wall of Boggo Road Station.
Selected artist Elisa Jane Carmichael
Elisa Jane Carmichael has twice been selected as a finalist in the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (Telstra NATSIAA), a significant recognition for an artist who is 38 years of age. She employs a range of techniques she employs in her art, including cyanotype, eco dying and weaving.
Water is a leitmotif in Carmichael’s art. In the cyanotype prints she made and exhibited with her mother Sonja Carmichael for the 2020–21 Tarnanthi exhibition, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, the blue colour of the ground is an echo of the rich colour of the Quandamooka sea, Carmichael says. She adds: ‘We travel across the bay to the island and being on the water is home. We must keep our waters safe like they have kept us safe for hundreds of thousands of years. My grandma would say “water is the living springs of Mother Earth”.’2 Other achievements include the public art installation Water is Life completed in 2021 at South Bank parklands.
plants, waters, gathering time is the title of Carmichael’s monumental wall for Woolloongabba Station, which honours and pays respect to the significance of gathering sites to First Nations Peoples across Australia. She writes in her design development submission for Cross River Rail that the natural landscape of the Woolloongabba area was rich in materials supporting daily life with an abundance of water, plants, trees, reeds and flowers growing strong with gathering sites of great cultural significance.
Central to her design is an open circular form representing the Bora Ring, a place of gathering, ceremony and ritual for First Nations people. The earth would move and shift after dancing and ceremony over time creating a ring on the surface of the land. Waterlily, grasses, wattle, stringy bark, mahogany, iron bark and other eucalyptus plants have been drawn into the design to honour the native plants which grew in the area.
Framing the design is a net which is symbolic of the many waterways of the Woolloongabba area. Some are still present today; however, many have been filled in over time. Sites of great cultural significance, native plant life and waterways will always be honoured and remembered by First Nations people across Australia.
View the 3D visualisation of Carmichael’s work, plants, waters, gathering time for Woolloongabba Station.
Texts by Barbara Flynn, August 2021
- Quoted in Inkmasters, ‘Teho Ropeyarn exhibition’, 2013, Art in Tropical Australia, www.art-in-tropical-australia. com/teho-ropeyarn-exhibition.html.
- Quoted in Art Gallery of South Australia, ‘Sonja Carmichael and Elisa Jane Carmichael: Making and responding: Fibre art, drawing and intergenerational making’, 2020, www.agsa.sa.gov.au/education/resources-educators/ resources-educators/tarnanthi-2020-open-hands/sonja-carmichael-and-elisa-jane-carmichael/making-andresponding/.