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“We must learn the history the Garden Palace refused to tell.” – Bruce Pascoe, acclaimed author
Aboriginal artist Jonathan Jones creates an ambitious new project for Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden inspired by the history of the 19th century Garden Palace.
For the 32nd Kaldor Public Art Project, Sydney-based Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones will present ‘barrangal dyara (skin and bones)’, transforming the historic Garden Palace from 17 September to 3 October 2016. The ambitious contemporary art project marks the first Kaldor Public Art Project presented with an Australian Aboriginal artist and considered one of the largest and most significant to date.
First conceived by Jones for Kaldor Public Art Projects’ 45th anniversary project, YOUR VERY GOOD IDEA, Jones’s proposal to create a large-scale, temporary art project for Sydney was selected from 160 ambitious applications from Australian artists by an international panel of curators and museum directors which included philanthropist, John Kaldor, Nicholas Baume from the New York Art Fund, and Nick Mitzevich, director of the Art Gallery of South Australia.
A vast sculptural installation across 20,000 square-metres of the garden incorporating a native kangaroo grassland and thousands of ceramic shields will blanket the site, which will be activated and enlivened by presentations of Aboriginal language, performances, talks, special events and workshops each day.
The 19th century Garden Palace building, a reworked version of London’s Crystal Palace, originally stood in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden, between 1879 and 1882, before it devastatingly burnt to the ground, taking with it countless Aboriginal objects collected along the colonial frontier. Sparks from the immense fire ignited spot fires across the city, reaching as far as Woolloomooloo and Balmain. Rising like a phoenix from the ashes, the site will emerge renewed as ‘barrangal dyara (skin and bones)’ represents an effort to commence a healing process and a celebration of the survival of the world’s oldest living culture despite this traumatic event. This timely project will re-tell local history from an Aboriginal perspective, giving new light to a moment in our shared history and speaking to cultural tensions still present in contemporary Australia. Key parts of the project have been developed in consultation with Gadigal elders Uncle Charles ‘Chicka’ Madden and Uncle Allen Madden.
Thousands of shields will echo the masses of rubble left over after the fire, raising the bones of the Garden Palace for a contemporary audience. Each shield takes its shape from one of four shield designs from Aboriginal nations of the south-east of Australia. The ceramic forms, strengthened through the use of fire, symbolically invert the destruction of the mostly wooden and bark Aboriginal objects in the 1882 blaze. Jones references his Kamilaroi and Wiradjuri heritage through the native grassland element of the installation, speaking to the traditional management of crops such as kangaroo and wallaby grass, and native millet. Fire was an important tool in the development of these grasslands and ‘burning off’ was an essential process, creating rebirth and renewal.
Throughout 2016, a series of three symposia will act as ‘spot fires’ that will ‘fan the flame’ of ideas circulating around ‘barrangal dyara (skin and bones)’, revealing and interrogating the complex layers of meaning embedded within the Palace’s massive symbolic, historic and cultural footprint.
A major component of the Royal Botanic Garden’s Bicentenary Celebrations, ‘barrangal dyara (skin and bones)’ is sure to attract an enormous number of visitors to the site over it’s 17 day duration.
2016 Exhibition Dates:
17 September to 3 October, Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney
Spot Fire Symposia Dates:
Spot Fire Symposium 1: Landscape and language – Saturday 7 May, State Library of New South Wales
Spot Fire Symposium 2: Spectacle, manifestation, performance – Saturday 16 July, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Spot Fire Symposium 3: Loss and resilience – Saturday 6 August, Australian Museum
Burning of the Garden Palace, Sydney, September 22, 1882, as seen from Macquarie Street, 1882
Courtesy National Library of Australia, Australian Capital Territory
