But the Indigenous woman who led the long line-up of faces, which included images of Olympian Cathy Freeman and comedian Hannah Gadsby, would have been unfamiliar to many of the Irish rockers' fans as the band launched into the track Ultra Violet (Light My Way).

She was Thancoupie, born in 1937 as Gloria Fletcher James, one of Australia's greatest contemporary ceramic artists.

Her former agent Jenny Isaacs says it was a sensational moment of recognition for her lifelong friend, who died in 2011.

"I got a text from England or something saying, 'we are the copyright producers of U2, we have been told of this woman and want to use this picture'," Ms Isaacs tells AAP.

"I managed to get them to do it, which was fantastic."

But praise from a world-famous band for the western Cape York Indigenous elder wasn't a huge surprise for her contemporaries and friends.

Thancoupie's art is shown in galleries around the world. Her monumental silver Eran sculpture, her last major work, adorns the entrance to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

In recent years, Ms Isaacs has been asked to source more of her works for Australian galleries and institutions.

"It's actually a recognition that they overlooked ceramics and didn't think her work was sufficiently worthy at the time," she says.

"I'm hunting for works for different institutions because they're finding, quote, 'she's not very well represented'."

Thancoupie lacked popular recognition in Australia, Ms Isaacs says, because pottery wasn't considered a great art form like painting.

Even some among the upper echelons of the ceramic scene disapproved of Thancoupie's departure from accepted principles and forms, which she studied at East Sydney Technical College in the late 1960s.

Instead of smooth, glazed Japanese-style bowls, which were in vogue at the time, Thancoupie's works were rough and uneven, with colours applied with freedom and creativity.

She used kitchen tools and domestic objects for clay moulds, trying for surface effects resembling nature and the bush.

Later, her inventive mind produced her classic hand-form spherical works - rough, tawny orbs and land stories drawn over thick tiles.

Her eggs and spheres, representing fertility and life cycles, were painted with animals, plants and creator beings of Thainakuith lore from her traditional country in far north Queensland.

"That was pretty new, because it was a very earthy, Indigenous approach," Ms Isaacs says.

"It's like they cooked mullet on the coals, whereas the white chef might put fish on a fancy grill or something.

"She was doing the same thing with ceramic art and it was good to eat."

Ever since Thancoupie first saw students working with clay at college in Sydney, she was drawn to the medium above all others because it reminded her of home.

"I enjoy pottery because I feel there is a closeness and that when I am working with clay, I am at peace and harmony with clay (earth), firing the kiln (fire), water (the sea and the wetness of clay) and air (the fresh air of Trinity Beach)," the artist explains in Ms Isaac's 1982 book Thancoupie the Potter.

"That is what I mean about closeness to life."

Weipa potter and ceramic artist Lyn Bates also feels her friend's art was authentic because of its imperfections, which were shunned by other ceramicists.

The pair used to "talk clay 24/7" and sometimes Ms Bates tucked Thancoupie's latest works into her own kiln to be fired.

"They were sort of left rough and some even had little cracks in them," Ms Bates says.

"She never smoothed things off ... it was just left as is."

Thancoupie imbued some works with her own body, like her unusual knee pots.

She would pick up balls of clay and smash them down on her knee, creating bowls with her own hand prints on the rims.

"They're incredible because that's actually her hand ... that was another ceramic form, that was hers, solely hers," Ms Bates says.

Thancoupie spent most of her time working at her home studio at Trinity Beach near Cairns or preparing for her many exhibitions.

But her spiritual place was the beach at Bouchat, north of Weipa.

There she would host holiday camps for local children, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, as she strove to preserve her language and culture.

Mapoon contemporary artist Daphne de Jersey's family helped organise those camps.

She first met the great artist, who was a friend of her parents, at the Trinity Beach studio when she was about eight.

"I was like, 'wow who's this kooky lady in this house surrounded by scrub and pottery'," Ms de Jersey says.

She was mentored by Thancoupie and now runs her own creative collective for Weipa, Mapoon and Napranum artists called Wei' Num Arts.

Ms de Jersey learned from Thancoupie about finding her muse in the place she came from.

"She just always brought everything back to where it all began," she says.

Thancoupie taught Ms de Jersey traditional techniques like beach hibiscus and sisal weaving, and her paintings reflect her mentor's style, melding contemporary technique and Indigenous meaning.

The great sculptor's deep connection with her country, as well as her authenticity and warmth can be glimpsed at the end of the 1972 land rights film Ningla A-Na

Just before the credits roll, a young Thancoupie is seen singing softly while working clay on a wheel.

"Here we are brother, looking that way, stories coming upon us," the artist says.

"Nearer, nearer we come, never look back from where we came, sun is sinking."

In later life, when signing her works, Thancoupie used her birth ritual name, Thanakupi, which means "the wattle flower".

More than 10 years after her death, her memories and artistic influence still waft over the western Cape like perfume from the golden flowers of her namesake tree.

She left a modest sum in her will to support young Indigenous artists in the area and the Thancoupie Bursary has been awarding scholarships for a decade, with eight recipients in 2022.

Ms Isaacs, who runs the program as the executor of her friend's estate, says she's pleased Thancoupie is getting more mainstream recognition in Australia, which she knew was only a matter of time.

"We've got bank notes with David Unaipon on them," she says.

"He was a great, early Indigenous scientist that we rediscovered - well she's sort of on the way to being rediscovered too.

"Thancoupie is unique because she took up a different art medium, she used the earth itself, and it took a long time for people to see that what she did with that form was quite brilliant in a conceptual way, before contemporary art was even called contemporary.

"And she's ours, she's Australian, she's an Indigenous Australian woman, before her time."

This AAP article was made possible by support from the Meta Australian News Fund and The Walkley Foundation.

Australian Associated Press