Floriate | Brisbane’s New Sculpture by Brian Robinson

Onespace congratulates Brian Robinson on the launch of his new public sculpture Floriate, unveiled on Friday 6 March with a smoking ceremony by Tribal Experiences at the Glasshouse Theatre at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre(QPAC), on the traditional lands of the Turrbal and Jagera Peoples.

A nationally and internationally recognised artist of the Kala Lagaw Ya and Wuthathi language groups of the Torres Strait, Robinson draws on Queensland’s natural flora and the Seven Watersheds in Floriate. The four-metre bronze sculpture intertwines flowering plants with flowing forms that reference river systems connecting to South Brisbane, alongside Robinson’s distinctive patterning of ancestral mythologies and Torres Strait marine ecosystems.

Installed at the entrance of the Glasshouse Theatre, the work forms part of a major cultural expansion that now makes QPAC the largest performing arts centre in Australia.

The artist and Onespace would like to thank the Queensland Government, Arts Queensland, the Department of Energy and Public Works, and QPAC for commissioning Floriate, and acknowledge Blight Rayner & Snøhetta architects, Urban Art Projects and Blaklash for their collaboration in designing and fabricating the work.

Robinson’s work reached a global audience  of 1.5 billion people during the 2018 Commonwealth Games, and in 2025 he exhibited at Expo 2025 Osaka.

In 2026 he will present a solo exhibition with Onespace and appear at the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair, with further exhibitions at Newcastle Art Gallery, Artspace Mackay, and Mossenson Galleries.

Video and Images: Rachel See, courtesy of Brian Robinson and UAP.