At The Launch of ‘Kintsugi, Our Golden Years’, by Jane Gillings
Sawmiller’s Park
29th November, 2019
A work is good when you are transfixed by it.
If you do happen to walk past it without noticing it, your footstep will be suddenly lighter.
We imagine the aboriginal people had enjoyed and used this site at Sawmiller’s well, endowed as it is with such excellent natural features. We have come to imagine a utopian world where a balance had been achieved between all animals and plants and rocks. We should make the effort to respect that history and be guided by it here at Sawmiller’s and everywhere else.
With subsequent settlement that prior history was erased and replaced by the processes of colonisation and industry, which sought to see the landscape as a potential source of individual wealth.
The trees’ and leaves’ rustling cannot quite disguise the echoes of those activities. This park is still in a phase of restoration. Grass and trees however, and the absence of cars do not a park maketh.
Perhaps it is because we are standing at the source of those sounds that the echoes are most pronounced. Here in the darkness of shadows we are more compelled to contemplate.
We have always been entranced by ruins. The function of civilisation is mostly to produce raw material for future ruins. Aboriginal people did well to not clutter the landscape with effigies of their former lives.
So what is it that a park maketh? Time is useful, and design which reflects sustainable values. Dogs are good because they attract human traffic. Paths get made from shortcuts and animals. Trees turn gnarly. Moss makes rocks dangerous. A ship’s hulk works.
A biennial or triennial sculpture show brings a new and different kind of life and gets stored in the memories of those who saw it which they bring back with them when the sculptures are gone.
Jane Gilling’s new work will do it.
Elsa Atkin’s commissioning this work to be permanently installed is inspired.
It sits well within the park. It doesn’t draw attention to itself declaring, I am art, seek me out. By being ingrained it shouts out, very quietly.
It brings out the past, but only to glorify the present. It makes the old new. It is a repair, an apology and a promise all in one.
It makes what is overlooked precious. It is a rally call for the underdog.
By being discreet it amplifies the park and gives the park meaning. Public art seeks to do that but rarely achieves it.
Congratulations Jane on what will be a lasting legacy.
We in Balmain will look over to Sawmiller’s and sense a substance ingrained here now.
Thank you.