Image copyright AFR

KATRINA STRICKLAND

Brook Andrew’s hand-painted caravans were one of the more moving parts of the Sydney Festival in January. About 45,000 people wandered in and out of them at Carriageworks, watching the video interviews playing inside about the lives of various inhabitants of Redfern.

The moveable artworks, each painted in a different design based on a Wiradjuri pattern, will now have a life beyond that event. Five of the seven have been donated to not-for-profit organisations that will use them as information booths, meeting places and for education programs.

Three of the seven have gone to indigenous organisations, two of which are based in Redfern; the Gadigal Information Service and the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence. The newly formed National Council for Sovereign Aboriginal Women will also get a caravan, which could end up at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra.

Two other caravans have been donated to the Bundanon Trust, which manages the Shoalhaven properties donated to the nation by Arthur Boyd.

Bundanon chief executive Deborah Ely says the caravans will be used by artists and visiting school children “as a space to sit, consider and create’’. Bundanon has a number of programs that involve indigenous education.

The final two caravans in the set will be kept by the artist, who is still considering what to do with them but might use one as a studio space.

The interviews that brought the caravans to life do not form part of the donation, but they could be lent back to the new caravan owners if and when the right occasion arises.

The project was conceived and funded by the Sydney Festival in conjunction with Carriageworks, the performing arts complex in Redfern. As both are not-for-profit, the donations have not been valued as no one will get a tax break.

However Bonhams valued one of the caravans at $10,000 to $15,000 last year when it included one in its Aboriginal art auction. The proceeds of that sale were to go towards the cost of the project, but it did not sell.

The market for Aboriginal art has been particularly tough in recent years, and while Andrew is a well-known artist, the size of the caravans probably ruled out many potential buyers.

Vernon Guest, the Sydney Festival producer who handled the caravan project, says Andrew was particularly keen to maintain the community aspect of the project, which is why they went to grassroots organisations which could make use of them, “rather than to big institutions which might shuffle them off into storage’’.

The Australian Financial Review

KATRINA STRICKLAND

IN THE LOCH
BLOOD STRICKEN
TIME HIDDEN LAY LOST
UNDER THIS PLACE OF BIRTH
UNDER YOUR MIND LIES A TUNNEL
UNDER THIS STONE SALTY DARKNESS
FORGOTTEN PLACE OF DOCKS AND SHIPS

Following text from MCA website:

This public artwork was commissioned as a contemporary interpretation of the heritage significance of the colonial naval docks located under the new wing of the MCA. In an alcove just to the side of the museum’s entrance, a sculptural LED arrow, measuring over two metres in length, pulsates with a dynamic pattern of radiating rectangular shapes. The arrow directs our gaze to seven lines of poetry written by Andrew and engraved into the concrete forecourt. As the artist says, readers following the text will walk along ‘a dock’s edge, water edge, imaginary edge of the archaeology and sandstone under the earth. Visitors will not only be physically drawn to the arrow from far across Circular Quay, especially during evening times, but will congregate to contemplate the text which specifically speaks to the site as Sydney Cove. This arrow and text mark the present site as a historical and colonial ship-building port, docks and architecture’.

The zig-zag pattern used in the LED arrow is derived from Andrew’s mother’s Wiradjuri ancestors. For the Wiradjuri, the radial diamond pattern was an important cultural marker, used on shields and dendroglyphs (marked trees). The artist’s strobing application is a metaphor for ‘our dizzying and electric contemporary societies built on capitalist and first class notions of identity and success’. This mesmerising pattern draws the viewer in towards the ‘earthy prose set in the ground’. For the artist, the prose functions ‘like a window into the earth below, offering words reflecting on the history of the site’.

“The choice to use text in the work was carefully considered: The text hints at lost or covered histories. History revived through public art is often a tricky task. I think history – whose history? – can mean different things to different people. There is a tendency to be too literal or maybe see a point in history as more romantic than it actually was. Or perhaps history was wrongly written and recorded. I am always aware that what we read today is often laced with personal perspectives and has most probably changed from the original event.

I was interested in reflecting on the romance of the site and what it was, and in addressing the dream-like qualities of history and how we perceive histories in different ways.”

Anne Loxley (Curator, C3West) and artist Brook Andrew