Swords, shields, spheres: The First Nations art in Brisbane’s Lightscape

Lightscape has returned for a second year, with two Queensland Aboriginal artists among those creating works for the immersive, illuminated two-kilometre trail through Brisbane’s City Botanic Gardens.

The Brisbane Festival highlight, which opened to the public on Thursday night and runs until early October, includes installations by Yidinji man Paul Bong and Gunggannji woman Michelle Yeatman.

North Queensland-based Bong, also known as Bindur Bullin, is a printmaker by trade who sometimes creates shields from rainforest woods.

One such work, Shields – a 1995 work made in collaboration with his uncle – has welcomed travellers into Brisbane for more than a decade from within the international airport’s arrivals terminal.

But Bong said his experience of working with light had been slightly different.

Speaking before the event’s opening, he explained that his works blended Aboriginal and post-colonial elements, but were not political statements.

Paul Bong’s Swords and Shields work features eight swords suspended overhead and 10 shields, including two 5.8-metre-tall shields.Credit: Mitch Lowe

He wanted people to come out of viewing his works with a “good experience”.

“What I’m trying to bring out in my style of artwork is two different types of culture, but in one artwork,” he said.

The 10 shields in his Lightscape piece Swords and Shields – first made for the Shine On Gimuy Festival in Cairns last year – are translucent, and the eight swords hung overhead are pared down to just silhouettes.

Two of the 10 shields measure 5.8 metres tall, and are installed at the entry to the work. Bong said they would be the first thing people saw.

He said visitors would notice the designs within the shields that evoked the sting of a scorpion, a Yidinji symbol for strength. Traditionally, strength-imbued shields are used in coming-of-age ceremonies for young men.

“When you get a shield it has got to be made by two people,” Bong said. “Two people build it and then give it to a young warrior.

“Then the young warrior will paint his totem and everything on that shield – a piece of goanna, snake or whatever he is – but he will [also] put, most of the time, the scorpion sting.”

In his Lightscape shields, these stings are sharp and black against the red glow of the body of work.

Michelle Yeatman’s spherical pots, Jilgi, mimic the shapes of sea life with their patterns. Credit: Courtesy Shine on Gimuy Festival

Where Bong has made a name for himself creating shields, ceramics artist Michelle Yeatman’s calling card is circular ceramic pots covered in sea-life imagery that she calls Jilgi.

Her work for Lightscape, Saltwater Spheres, is lit up in shades of blue, drawing on the ocean and its identity as a great healer.

The spheres vary in size from less than a metre tall to well above the head of a passer-by.

Bong and Yeatman’s installations are complemented by narration tracks that give cultural context to the art.

Lightscape runs from the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens for the Brisbane Festival, between August 29 and October 12.