‘The artwork, remembering Arabanoo, is based on an engaged response to the site. It is made up of a series of five artwork elements that together form one installation narrative; these are integrated into the site and unite the site, while contributing creatively to the site and the community.’
— Jonathan Jones, in Curatorial Guide and Maintenance Manual for remembering Arabanoo (2022)
remembering Arbanoo: gwara (flags), 2022
Three flags, located on the northern (Customs House Lane)
and western (Loftus Lane) facades of Hinchcliff House
Wool
750 × 50cm
Jonathan Jones
remembering Arabanoo: betūŋigo (oysters), 2022
Bronze (lost-wax technique)
3500 individual oysters, welded together into approximately 60 clusters
Each cluster: 13.2cm (height) × 64cm (length)
19.25m (length overall)
Affixed at height of 1m off the ground to the southern wall of
heritage building, Gallipoli Memorial Club; the height
approximates the high-tide mark of nearby Sydney Harbour
Jonathan Jones
remembering Arabanoo: bengadee (ornament), 2022
In situ cast concrete
1298.7cm (length) × 503.3cm (height) at its western end,
decreasing as the slope rises to 291.2 cm (height) at its eastern end
Jonathan Jones (Kamilaroi/Wiradjuri),
remembering Arabanoo: weerong (Sydney Cove), 2022
Artwork synonymous with the ceiling of the internal through-site
link of 6-8 Loftus Street
LED lights, aluminium, Perspex, and 24-hour stereo soundscape
featuring two native speakers of the local Eora Aboriginal language,
Lille Madden (Arrernte/Bundjalung/Kalkadoon from Gadigal Country)
and Joel Davison (Dunghutti/Gadigal)
Sound design by Luke Mynott, Unison Sound, Sydney
6.5m (height at western end) reducing to
5.6m (at eastern end) × 20m (length)
Jonathan Jones
remembering Arabanoo: magora (fish), 2022
Verde Issorie marble, brass, bluestone
1007 fish scales of Verde Issorie marble, salvaged and recycled by the
artist from the lobby of the former AMP Tower at 50 Bridge Street,
and waterjet-cut in the shape of abstracted fish scales; set into high-tensile
brass casings (‘shoes’) with a mirrored finish, then dropped into bluestone
pavers with a grit-blasted finish
LocationQuay Quarter Lanes, Sydney
CommissionerAMP Capital
Architects 3XN, Studio Bright, Silvester Fuller, SJB
CuratorBarbara Flynn, Art Advisor
Award Property Council of Australia Innovation & Excellence Awards,
Award for Best Public Art Project 2023: Olafur
National Association of Women in Construction Awards for Excellence 2022,
Finalist, Innovation in Design: artist
Australian Institute of Architects NSW Chapter,
The City of Sydney Lord Mayor’s Prize 2022
Australian Institute of Architects NSW Chapter
Urban Design Award 2022
PhotographyMark Pokorny
Made with the permission of elders from Gadigal Country, in particular Uncle Charles ‘Chicka’ Madden, the artwork acknowledges the Gadigal people as traditional owners, the wider Eora Aboriginal community and the site’s pivotal role in early colonial relationships. It also celebrates the site’s future ambitions, as described in AMP Capital’s planning documents.
The site
The site is situated in the north-west of Gadigal Country. At the end of a protected cove known as Warang (Sydney Cove), the site and its immediate surrounds would have included an intertidal rock platform, a permanent freshwater source (later known as the Tank Stream) and rich coastal bushland. Gadigal people have lived in this region for thousands of generations, and the area and its resources would have been highly significant to them. These same resources were the reason the British chose the area to establish the first permanent European colony in 1788, making the site the epicentre of colonisation in Australia. The British flag was raised (believed to be on present-day Loftus Street), exposing both Gadigal people and the Eora nation to British imperialism and violence.
Governor Arthur Phillip (in office 1788–92) selected the site and its surrounds for the establishment of Government House and the Government House Gardens. Government House was the first permanent building in Sydney, completed in 1789 using a combination of locally made and imported bricks, along with local stone and timber. As the centre of colonial administration, the site played a major role in Australia’s history, impacting directly on Aboriginal lives. The site’s importance in the establishment of Sydney and in turn Australia is witnessed in the memorials located in the adjacent Macquarie Place Park, including the Obelisk of Distances (erected 1818), which marks the official starting point for measuring all the road distances in New South Wales.
Gadigal were forced out of Warang and its surrounds, and Eora avoided contact. However, following the devastating impact of galgalla (smallpox) in 1789, when it has been estimated that up to 90 per cent of the Eora population died, Government House was frequented by a number of notable Eora, the most well-known being Woollarawarre Bennelong (c. 1764–1813), a Wongal man. Bennelong and his cohort often dined with the governor and in an act of exchange shared his name Woollarawarre with Phillip, and called himself ‘governor’.
Exchange continued to define this site, both locally and internationally, with Warang being the key port for the warehouses developed in the colony, including wool stores, and in 1844–45, Customs House was built on the site to serve as the headquarters of the government’s customs service until 1990. Aboriginal people continued to engage with Warang, with Aboriginal people living on its eastern shores at the Government Boatsheds in the late nineteenth century. Later, members of the La Perouse community would come to Customs House to sell their boomerangs, shellwork and other goods.
Today the site, situated between Loftus and Young Streets, and Loftus and Custom House Lanes, is known as Quay Quarter Lanes and was developed by Kent Street Pty Ltd as a mixed-use development. The site is made up of three new commercial/residential buildings by architects Studio Bright (Building A), Silvester Fuller (Building B), and SJB (Building C). Two existing heritage buildings on the site were retained: the Gallipoli Memorial Club (Building G, refurbished by Lippmann Partnership) and Hinchcliff House (Building H, refurbished by Carter Williamson Architects). The public domain of Quay Quarter Lanes was coordinated by ASPECT Studios. Apart from one ceiling zone in Building A set aside for art by Studio Bright, the site was designed without an area for an artwork to exist.
In order to make sense of this complex site, with its limited art opportunities, a series of five artwork elements was conceived and installed. Located separately, these elements come together to create one narrative. In this way, the overall installation will slowly reveal itself as people become familiar with the site, the individual elements are noticed and the larger story is understood. As such, the artwork elements are intended as a collective and cannot exist independently of each other.
The story of Arabanoo has been chosen as the central narrative. Arabanoo was captured on 31 December 1788 following instructions from Governor Arthur Phillip, and imprisoned on the site under Governor Phillip’s orders. On 18 May 1789 – less than five months later – he sadly passed away from galgalla and was buried in an unknown location in the grounds of Government House Gardens.
Arabanoo was active in the colony for such a short period of time that little is known about him. The most descriptive texts come from Watkin Tench, David Collins and John Hunter, all officers of the First Fleet. Arabanoo’s story is the story of the first sustained engagement between the two cultures, making Arabanoo highly significant in the history of this nation. Not only are his experiences a universal metaphor for what Aboriginal people experienced with the arrival of the British but he was also the first Eora man to be abducted by the British. As a captive, he provided the colonists with their first insights into Aboriginal cultural knowledge. Larissa Behrendt sees Arabanoo as:
a figure who has been too lost in the tide of history but his legacy should be a symbol of strength and resilience. His fate is a reminder that we must hold on to our culture, our values, our humanity. We must not become what others think we are or what they try to turn us into. We survive and thrive and love and laugh and this is the greatest victory of our people.
The few vignettes we have of this significant man demonstrate Aboriginal values, including his affection for children and animals; his pride, which was offended when jokes were made at his expense; and his gut-wrenching reaction to the horrific impact of smallpox on his people. Tench wrote of his character, stating that:
the gentleness and humanity of his disposition frequently displayed themselves: when our children, stimulated by wanton curiosity, used to flock around him, he never failed to fondle them, and, if he were eating at the time, constantly offered them the choicest part of his fare.
It is important to note that the name of Arabanoo’s clan was not recorded, or if it was, it hasn’t yet come to light. Although he was captured on Cammeraygal Country at present- day Manly, this may not have been his Country. In a similar example, we know Woollarawarre Bennelong, who was also captured on Cammeraygal Country in 1789, was from the Wangal clan of the southern shore of Parramatta River. For the purposes of this project, Arabanoo is identified as an Eora or a Sydney Aboriginal man.
First named ‘Manly’ by the British, after the place where he was captured, Arabanoo was imprisoned with an iron handcuff attached to his left wrist, which he called ‘ben-gàd-ee’, meaning ornament, which he believed it to be. Captain Watkin Tench noted ‘his delight changed to rage and hatred when he discovered its use’. Tench washed, shaved and dressed Arabanoo, and described him as ‘black as the lighter caste of the African negroes’. Engaging with the British, Arabanoo continued to provide language, including gweè-un (fire) and Weè-rong (Sydney Cove), and, unlike his captors who didn’t learn to speak the local language, he also started to learn to speak English. Tench wrote that ‘much information relating to the customs and manners of his country was also gained from him’.
Arabanoo’s appetite was often commented on and, along with fish and meat, he enjoyed bread and tea. His sense of responsibility towards others was noted, as he always shared his food with children and animals. His empathy was highlighted in March 1789 when Arabanoo protested the punishment of 150 lashes given to convicts who had run away to attack local Aboriginal people and steal their belongings. Tench described how ‘Arabanoo was present at the infliction of the punishment; and was made to comprehend the cause and the necessity of it; but he displayed on this occasion symptoms of disgust and terror only’.
The devastating galgalla epidemic broke out among the Aboriginal population in April 1789. In despair, Arabanoo helped to properly bury some of his kin. David Collins noted his response: ‘he exclaimed, “All dead! All dead!” and then hung his head and was silent.’ After tending many of the sick and dying, Arabanoo succumbed to galgalla himself and passed away on 18 May 1789 and was buried in the Government House Gardens. Collins described how Arabanoo’s passing was ‘to the great regret of everyone who had witnessed how little of the savage was found in his manner’.
I wonder if it’s helpful to try to understand Arabanoo’s time – when worlds collided in Sydney – as a time when all his senses were blasted with a kind of cacophony in the system of harmonised forces that usually granted him his living. I wonder if we can contrive to see what he heard; to touch what he smelt; to taste it all as light. This mash-up of the senses might help us understand something not only about then but also about now, as the worlds continue to collide.
The artwork is made up of five artwork elements, which together portray elements of Arabanoo’s life and activate the site with a living memory. The artwork elements are:
- the depiction of an imagined bengadee (ornament) on the southern wall of the SJB building (Building C)
- the creation of a light and sound installation on the ceiling of the Studio Bright arcade (Building A)
- flags hung from the historic pulleys on Hinchcliff House (Building H)
- the inlay of fish scales on the paving throughout Loftus Lane, and
- the creation of a betūŋigo (oyster) fringe in front of the newly exposed historic sandstone wall of the Gallipoli Memorial Club (Building G).
The project curator Barbara Flynn describes this methodology:
Jones’s artwork achieves something quite rare: it is site-specific, yet transcends decoration to tell a story and embody meanings that are worth expressing. Equally notable is the way the artist succeeds in expressing his ideas and convictions without compromise while respecting and accommodating the contributions of others. Thus, the five artwork elements are woven together in a cogent and seamless whole without overwhelming or conflicting with any of the architects’ or landscape architects’ work for the Quay Quarter Lanes development. The five artwork elements are spaced evenly across the site to encourage people to walk the site. The story of Arabanoo and the first people of Sydney will now be better known to the people living in Sydney today and to future generations.
It is worth nothing that the artwork was designed in reference to AMP Capital. AMP Capital acted as the client, all personnel on the project were AMP Capital employees, all documentation was marked AMP Capital, and all approvals were performed by AMP Capital. For this reason, throughout this document, AMP Capital is often referred to, however Kent Street Pty Ltd issued the contract to the artist.
Excerpt from Jonathan Jones, remembering Arabanoo, 2022, Curatorial Guide and Maintenance Manual, pp. 6–11