It’s not so much sorry. It’s, I was asleep and now I’m waking up.
The works scattered over the site here at Wamboin are landscape punctuations, which give the words of the landscape structure and sense.
They are signs. Signifiers. They are the traffic cops of their immediate community.
They are, if we were so inclined, temples, to remind you that you are in paradise, because we tend to forget.
I haven’t been to Bali, but I believe they employ similar punctuations in the landscape for similar reasons.
The works establish a connection to the landscape from which they can never be released.
Each work is a link in a chain. Any links removed cause the land to come adrift again.
The word ‘sorry’ has been debased by personal relationship squabbles. The sorrier always comes across pathetic, weak, unattractive. I seek to remain attractive and resist using the word, but I suppose I am, in a way, sorry.
We have to get it right this time. We think we tried before and failed. Why try again?
There are so many amazing aboriginal voices now, we cannot drown them out with our preconceptions. Filmmaker and chef Warwick Thornton, actor and storyteller Meyne Wyatt, playwright and comedian Nakkiah Lui, Victor Steffensen from Firesticks. These voices, these artists hold our attention with their compelling subject.
This place at Wamboin was recently called Sculpture in The Sky
It’s Sorry Country today.