After the Monsoonal Deluge is an artwork by Brian Robinson, directed by Craig Walsh for Cairns Regional Council public art in Cairns City.
Artist Statement: Plants, sunshine, humid nights, insects, frogs and more plants. The word ‘tropical’ conjures up images of luxuriant foliage, exotic shapes, enticing textures and bold colours. After the Monsoonal Deluge is best expressed through the tropical garden – a haven of refuge, retreat and relaxation that offers the greatest opportunities for a sense of place, both instantly recognisable and part of our landscape heritage.
After the Monsoonal Deluge references the abundance of plant life and flowers that are found grown everywhere in profusion across Tropical North Queensland, an area in the country that braces for the monsoon season year after year.
In the Eastern Torres Strait, this season, which is known as koki kerker is generally a time of heavy rain during which there is luxuriant growth. In the Western Torres Strait, it is known as kuki, when the strong winds blew intermittently from the north-west accompanied by deluges of rain. The seasonal calendar of Torres Strait life reflects the changes in the seas, the winds, the stars and the land, and moves through cycles of abundance and scarcity, renewal and harvest, wet and dry.
Star constellations are of significant importance to the Islanders who use them to encode nature’s relative predictability into mythological narratives like Usiam, a cluster of seven stars that are more commonly known as Pleiades or the Seven Sisters, a time of planting. These narratives epitomise the cosmology or sense of understanding of one’s place in the universe and as island cultures that are dependent on sedentary agriculture and fishing, hey allow the stars, the winds and the tides to set the pace.