Site-specific performative/spatial work and architectural construction.
Certificate of Action, Certificate of Establishment, Certificate of Transfer. Commenced 10 November 2019. In progress.
three phases of a monument
This longitudinal project centred around a 3-metre long fracture created by the artist in a concrete slab located in Melbourne's CBD (1 City Rd, Southbank, Australia, VIC 3006) using an axe, pick, jackhammer, and rotating saw. The 1 City Road block is the site of the former YMCA headquarters building that was demolished in 1983 after it sustained damage as a result of the construction of the Arts Centre and Concert Hall. The land was acquired by the State of Victoria as Crown Land and remained vacant up until 2013 and in 2022 was announced as the site for a new National Gallery of Victoria Contemporary (NGV Contemporary).
Initially titled ‘wilder’, the performative work was conceived as an exploration of the potential of unsuppressed nature and land management in urban spaces: the fracture site was to provide an intentional and calibrated breaking point in the blanket of bitumen and concrete that covers the city, where nature would be given free license to grow wild without intervention. Within this conception of the project, the breaking of the concrete was simply considered a means to an end (i.e. it is necessary to break the concrete to expose soil in which vegetation can grow).
However, after the breaking action was completed and the fracture site in the slab established, an alternative line of enquiry emerged; the complex relationship that the outcomes of the physical action (the fracture created in the concrete slab) have with permanence. Eventually site ownership where the fracture is located will be transferred and the process of constructing a building at the 1 City Rock Block will commence. The fracture site will be subjected to secondary act of breaking, followed by construction.
The research and creative outcomes jointly engage with these two lines of enquiry: the creation of a site of wilderness through labour, and material transformation of sites of labour. The work engages with these two lines of enquiry through conceptual and legal frameworks; the philosophy of the breaking of the concrete slab and the emergence of a possible wilderness, and a certificate that defines and substantiates the work’s physical parameters and function as a sculptural/spatial artwork (its legal objecthood) so to establish the work with a set of rights. As well as how these actions exist and transform over time.
The action certification sets forth the conditions under which the work operates both in the present as well as when the site is subject to destruction;
(a) any process that results in the destruction of the fracture constitutes a secondary artistic act that shall, without exception, become part of the work, and
(b) any subsequent building erected at the Site following the destruction of the fracture shall also constitute a secondary material expression of the work.
Once construction of the NGV Contemporary building is completed, it will become an architectural sculpture that is absorbed into the framework of the artwork. A second certificate will then be issued to establish this second material expression as the artwork. A third, and final certificate of transfer will then be established that will offer all rights, including intellectual, creative and authorship, to the Traditional Custodians on which the work is placed.
The new title, Three phases of a monument, was adopted to reflect these three phases.
Inspired by the legal framework of adverse possession, and the theories of possession, boundaries and labour expressed by John Locke, ‘'Three Phases of a Monument’ engages in dialogues of land ownership (both historical and contemporary), land rights and cycles of land dispossession from Indigenous peoples. The work also considers modes repossession of traditional lands by Traditional Custodians within the Australian urban context, as well as the structures that now occupy unceded lands.
Over time, the work is inherently bracketed by developments or further limitations of rights and justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
