Tom Nicholson Future Memorials

In 2008 Tom Nicholson began to develop an as yet unrealised public art work: a monument to Batman’s Treaty. This public monument is to consist of an obelisk-like free-standing chimney covered by an array of different plaques, suggesting different possible meanings for this simple vertical form. It takes as its starting point Melbourne’s first chimney, built for John Batman (1801-1839) by William Buckley (1776 -1856). The work draws out the contradictory meanings of the Treaty that Batman claimed he signed with Wurundjeri people in 1835. The installation at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Towards a monument to Batman’s Treaty, comprises the exact number of bricks required to construct the chimney, and the texts for the multiple plaques that would encase it. Like a preparatory drawing, it is a proposition towards the future realisation of the monument: a ‘future memorial’, at the same time suggesting the appearance of its own ruin. The work is part of Nicholson’s ongoing interest in the early history of Melbourne, and in the possibilities of re-animating the form of the monument towards a more complex, even contradictory, articulation of our history. Nicholson’s project has evolved over five years in relation to several important dialogues, with the artist’s partner, the Aboriginal rights solidarity activist Clare Land, with the writer and historian Tony Birch, and with senior Wurundjeri elder Aunty Joy Wandin Murphy.

http://twma.com.au/exhibitions/event/future-memorials-jonathan-jones-tom-nicholson-and-aunty-joy-wandin-murphy/