Commissioned by The City of Greater Geelong, 2023
Concrete, brass
Boronggook Drysdale Library lawn, Wadawurrung Country, 2-8 Wyndham Street, Drysdale
The title of the sculpture – The Secret – weaves together two ideas intrinsic to the site: the contemporary library – as a place of learning and discovery, and the historical significance of the site – a boronggook, a fecund grassy turf – which became a place of gathering and connection.
Both the historical and contemporary use of the site holds untold stories that are to be shared and secrets that are to be imagined.
When I was a young child, each day after school from 3-5pm, I had wait for my mum to finish work. I would spend these hours in the local library (Glenfield Library, Auckland, New Zealand). At least 1000 hours of my youth were spent in that library – I knew it inside out and back to front. I lost myself and found myself in between the covers of the hundreds (thousands?) of books I would meander through. I never got tired of it because every day there would be new things to discover, and I always felt inspired and mystified by the things I found. This accumulated experience left an indelible love of libraries.
The library – as a place – is quiet, considered, thoughtful, curious, intelligent, private – it holds secrets, truths and fictions that shape the young mind. The link between what sits on the page and what is gleaned in the mind of the reader is intimate and yet tenuous – we can only ever imagine what the author is intending to convey. A book read by ten people will be experienced and remembered in ten different ways. We may all share the book, but our experience of the words is unique: enigmatic and private.
In the same way, this artwork is intended to be a place where people create their own stories and build their own histories. It’s a sculpture that can be played across, crawled through, sat upon. Its use is completely open-ended. People can imagine themselves into the forms and create their own experiences with it – experiences that will create memories that are unique, personal, enigmatic.
