Artstory Light Walk
In 2024, the Artstory Light Walk will be a mesmerising and entrancing installation of public art, light sculptures and soundscapes which reflects the colours and beauty of Tropical North Queensland, through the eyes and imaginations of First Nations artists!
From Thursday 3 - Sunday 13 October, the Artstory Light Walk will be free for families and the general public to attend, from 5pm daily. It will be situated alongside the 'Gimuy Boulevard' of fig trees, adjacent to the Cairns Lagoon, The Pier Shopping Centre and Eastern Events Lawn.
We thank Paul ‘Bindur Bullin’ Bong (Swords & Shields) and Michelle Yeatman (Jilgi pots) for their stunning works from 2023!
Artists 2024
Marun Carl Fourmile is born into the Waluparra clan of the Yidinji Nation and is connected through the monsoon season, Nyumpurru. Marun has kept knowledge of cultural connection that has been handed down through the generations of family. Marun shares and continues the strong Yidinji culture of Gimuy through song, dance, and ceremony. He is Director of Minjil Indigenous Cultural Services, a company that provides cultural education, experiences and services in Gimuy/Cairns.
Merindi Schrieber Merindi Schrieber is strongly connected to her Kuku Yalanji (Mossman, Queensland) roots. As a multidisciplinary artist, her creative strength and passion is centred around bringing songs, stories, language, and culture to the next generation. As a musician she has performed globally and began the festival circuit with the award-winning group, the Briscoe Sisters. Merindi continues to lean on the ancient practice of song and yarn to keep knowledge and history alive in the modern-world. Her weaving reflects a practice that is grounded with a deep connection to her mother’s land: Kuku Yalanji. Merindi is also a creative producer, playwright, performer, voice over artist, and weaver. She recently worked on the Logie Award-winning animation series of Little J and Big Cuz as co-translator and voice of Big Cuz, bringing together Kuku Yalanji elders, community and school students for this project.
Doreen Collins is a Yolngu (Garawirrtja) and Kuku-Yalanji woman. Born in Katherine (Northern Territory), Doreen grew up in Darwin and Milingimbi, Northern Territory. She moved to Wujal Wujal in 2022 to her father’s country and has recently learned to paint since moving to Wujal Wujal. She was inspired by her Great-Grandmother Laurie Baymarrwangga also known as “Big Boss” who won the Senior Australian of Year Award in 2012. Doreen learned from her mother and elders to make baskets, string dilly bags and mats using natural bush materials.
Marun Carl Fourmile
The Guardians
2024
These two unique pieces–which form the gateway to Shine On Gimuy Artstory Light Walk in 2024–reminds us of the mighty legacy and birthright of the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji peoples. Marun Carl Fourmile’s works pay homage to the warriors and custodians who were and always are the Wisdom Keepers; his Grandfather, Yie-Nie, was the King of Gimuy.
These four large-scale, cylindrical installation pieces feature King Yie-Kie’s shield design and the ‘balurr’–a sacred, curved woomera associated with the ancestral creation story of the Great Barrier Reef, from a time just after the last Ice Age.
“My Elders used the curved woomera and would put it at the bow of the boat,
as a blessing for the vessel and to calm the waters” – Marun Carl Fourmile
The designs illustrate the skin and shield markings relating to the Gimuy area, with the associated circular shapes depicting the landscape of the mud flats, rainforest and the saltwaters. These pieces show these areas at the commencement of sunrise and sunset, demonstrating the cycle of seasons which formerly determined behaviour and travel.
Marun Carl Fourmile–as a Songman, linguist, performer, artist, and Cultural educator–is passionate about visitors to Gimuy having an understanding of what it is to be a Bama person. For him, as an artist, his work is much more than singing and dancing, it's about the ongoing belief systems of his people in sharing their stories and songs.
Merindi Schrieber
Balji (Dilly Bags)
2024
Kuku Yalanji artist, musician and singer-songwriter, Merindi Schrieber, celebrates the unique ‘balji’ baskets of her Mossman area peoples. Balji are traditional woven baskets, largely made with kurrajong bark, lawyer cane, pandanus leaves, a variety of native river grasses, and ‘kakan’ / black palm fibers. Depending on the materials a balji is made from, this may determine their specific practical and ceremonial purposes. Merindi reimagines balji, writ large as six hanging installations that connect the length of the Artstory Light Walk for 2024. These works are based on a practice which Merindi has honed and mastered since she was 16. Inspired young by the duty of Cultural Maintenance, Merindi felt an innate yearning to sit and to learn this customary weaving technique from her Grandmother–a practice which was prohibited under more colonialist times.
“Traditionally, the men source the fibers, the women and children ‘yurril’ / strip and clean the fibers and then weave the balji. It’s a true community effort! This process is still strong in the Kuku Yalanji nation, stemming from the re-birthing of this weave, through the Cultural Maintenance work of my Grandparents” – Merindi Schrieber
Balji / Dilly Bags have been used throughout the ages for numerous purposes, in dance and ceremony, to hold knowledge and sacred meaning, to processing certain foods under running water, gathering fruits, and carrying babies and utensils.
Doreen Collins
Kurranji (Cassowary)
2024
The majestic cassowary–a King Bird–known in the Kuku Yalanji language as ‘kurranji’, is a totemic ancestral totem of great cultural importance to the entire Tropical North Queensland region. The cassowary / kurranji has varied language names and many similar but varying stories by all Bama / rainforest peoples and unique language groups. For example, the Yidinji name for the cassowary is ‘gindaja’. This esteemed bird is linked, and links, the Bama Nations of the region through shared and cross-over Songlines, legends and creation stories.
“Kurranji could once fly, having great wings! It would travel all over across Sky Country. But, as it traveled from the rainforest areas to the coast, those wings got stuck in the mud flats. Unable to free itself for a long time it slowly began to lose its wing feathers, then they were gone. Kurranji had to use its feet to get out and walk and now their remaining feathers are black from the mud and this bird had to navigate a new world on land” – Doreen Collins
Doreen has reimagined the cassowary / kurranji to new heights, akin to its importance to her and her peoples, as a 5 meter tall light sculpture. Visitors to the Artstory Light Walk 2024 can experience this gorgeous creature to the scale of the magnificence of its story.
Northern neighbours of the local Yidinji peoples (whose unceded homelands the Shine On Gimuy multi-arts light festival takes place), Kuku Yalanji lands stretch from the Mossman/Mossman Gorge and the Daintree rainforest, up Cape Tribulation to Wujal Wujal (where Doreen Collins is from), and Cooktown and the Palmer River areas of Cape York Peninsula.
