1957 - 2021

Indigenous artist Arone Raymond Meeks was part of the team behind a much-loved large-scale mosaic artwork that adorned the North Bondi Children's Pool wall from 1986 to 2019. The work was a collaboration between various artists and the community, with Meeks designing its Indigenous elements.

Meeks was born in Sydney in 1957, and grew up at Yarrabah, near Cairns, and El Arish, near Mission Beach, in Far North Queensland, but his Country is in Cape York. He was taught to paint by his grandfather while also receiving a state education. He later studied at Sydney’s City Art Institute. Meeks then returned to Queensland to study with Lardil Elders on Mornington Island. He integrated both cultures into his work, which included painting, sculpture, printmaking, illustration, public art and community advocacy. His practice responded to issues including land rights, sexuality, Indigenous health care, culture and place. His Indigenous community work included sexual health education among remote Queensland communities.

Meeks’s achievements included helping to establish Sydney’s Boomali Gallery, a Cairns Indigenous Art Fair directorship and an Australia Council fellowship to study in Paris. He exhibited widely in Europe and North and South America. His work can be found in national and International art collections including Canada, Japan, France and the US.

The North Bondi Children's Pool mural was a particularly big undertaking, involving labour-intensive mosaic tiling. Across the 30 metres of wall, each tile and gem was handpicked by local people. Some tiles were made in school art rooms, while others were fired in the Bondi Pavilion Pottery Studios. Mirror fragments were placed in sections to catch the afternoon light. Community volunteers helped build the artwork in 1986-87.

The artists included Lloyd Keleman, Suzanne Holman and Jenny Orchard. The mosaic’s themes focus on human evolution, the cyclical nature of life and man’s impact on the environment and the sea. The six panels depicted society’s evolution from single-cell organism through to industrialisation, before returning to three constant factors in human existence: earth, air and sea.

The mural was removed in 2019 because of concrete cancer. Meeks died in 2021 after a short battle with cancer.

Courtesy Geoff Dixon and the Gujaga Foundation.