Warual in place at the new Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital

The Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital received its first patients on Saturday 29 November 2014 when the hospital officially opened its doors to the public. One of the first artworks revealed to the public was Brian Robinson’s Warual, impressively carved concrete discs which feature at the entrance of the new Children’s Hospital in Brisbane. Warual is a term in the Western Torres Strait Island language of Kala Lagaw Ya, which means group of turtles. The turtle was, and still is, an important food source and for Indigenous people throughout Queensland, including the islands that lay just off its coastline. The carapace of the Hawksbill Turtle also played a central part in the manufacture of traditional dance masks and objects used in sacred ceremonial performances for the people of Torres Strait. Warual joins a group of significant works curated by Lynne Seear for the hospital including works by Richard Bell (Milani Gallery), Emily Floyd (Anna Scwhartz Gallery) and Helga Groves (Milani Gallery and Sutton Gallery). Itcreates a visually welcoming and calming environment for people visiting the hospital. Warual is a work that is easily read and appreciated by patients and their families utilising the space. The launch of Warual tops off a big year for Robinson having just recently seen another commission, Kolap Spinning Tops, opened in the reinstatedSaylor Family Park in Wickham in Western Australia’s far north on 24 October 2014. And Robinson’s carving prowess will be translated again into concrete discs on the new Children’s Hospital site with a further commission underway for the adjacent Centre for Children’s Health Research (CCHR). For this project Robinson is exploring the theme of embryonic beginnings expressed through turtle hatchlings Waru Kazi [meaning young turtle]. This proposal extends the Warual concept which explored the migration patterns of three particular turtle species – Hawksbill turtle, Green turtle and Loggerhead turtle. Brian Robinson is represented by: KickArts Contemporary Arts  in Queensland; Mossenson Galleries Indigenart in Western Australia and Victoria; and Michael Reid Gallery in New South Wales. The Warual concrete discs were fabricated by Urban Art Projects.

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