Bianca Beetson

Feast of the Bon-yi, large nuts by Bianca Beetson at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Mount Coot-tha

Feast of the Bon-yi, spirit figures by Bianca Beetson at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Mount Coot-tha

Bianca Beetson is an Australian contemporary artist.

Life and career[]

Bianca Beetson was born in Roma, Western Queensland. She is an Indigenous Australian of the Kabi Kabi nation of the Sunshine Coast in South East Queensland. She studied and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in visual arts at the Queensland University of Technology from 1993 to 1995. She completed her Honours in 1998 and is currently undertaking a Doctorate of visual arts at Griffith University.^[1]

She established herself as an artist for contemporary Australian aboriginal art and lives and works in Brisbane. Her work includes media such as painting, photography, installation, new media and ceramics. In paintings she often uses shades of pink but is also interested in making pottery and ceramics. Her work also reflects on her relationship to skin and she interprets body paint designs and scarification marks in a contemporary manner.^[2]

In 2013 she was commissioned by the Brisbane Botanic Gardens to install her sculpture Feast of the Bon-yi in bronze and corten steel there on Mount Coot-tha. The cluster of large nuts and spirit figures visualises the gathering of the tribes. The nut itself symbolises a sacred object, it provides nourishment, rebirth and growth and is the reason why people travelled from so far and wide.^[3]

References[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bianca Beetson.