BRIAN ROBINSON | 'A league of extraordinary gentlemen: The curse of Cortez' | Vinylcut

"I swear to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice, in all their forms, and my sons and their sons, shall follow me. (Oath of the Skull) A league of extraordinary gentlemen: The curse of Cortez evokes tales of piracy and high seas adventures reminiscent of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean and Indiana Jones. This artwork revolves around the Phantom, a fictional, purple skin-tight costumed crime-fighter in the African country of Bangalla. Like the ancestral narratives of Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait), the island dotted intricate waterway between Naigai Dagam Dhawdhay and Zei Dagam Dhawdhay, which were inspired by spiritual, cultural and natural phenomena, the Phantom, conceived by Lee Falk’s life-long fascination with King Arthur, Zorro and Tarzan resonates these same qualities, even though they’re worlds’ apart. The attraction to this purple superhero was immediate as I stumbled across boxes of phantom comics in my athe’s (Ali Mohummad Drummond) house on Waiben as a child. One could almost hear the distant drumming that echoed from the illustrated pages of each graphic novel, as though deliberately drawn there by the Phantom himself. A league of extraordinary gentlemen: The curse of Cortez takes the viewer on another spellbound mystery, full of ancient cartographic sea monsters, masked figures that lurk in the jungle, the spoils of pearling and chests full of heathen-god-cursed Aztec gold coins to fuel everyone’s greed. A league of extraordinary gentlemen: The curse of Cortez pays homage to the long line of strong and powerful ancestors from the Drummond, Villaflor, Pablo, Malay, Assacruz, Arboleda, Robinson and Salmon families that are connected to the artist through blood and kinship, ethnicities that span the globe and continue to develop and inspire, much like the Ghost who walks himself."

BRIAN ROBINSON | 'A league of extraordinary gentlemen: The curse of Cortez' | 2023 | vinylcut | H 1000 x W 2000 mm