Making Ground Artist Statements
Dean Cross with Nadia Refaei, everyone stone displaced, 2021
Ngunnawal/Ngambri stones, post boxes, text
This stone you can see on the table is one of three perfect skipping stones collected from my home. They are Ngunnawal/Ngambri stones. Chosen because they are flat, close to round and not too heavy or light. They left my hand from Warrang/Sydney on Gadigal and Wangal land, where I live, work and go to the post office. Each stone is a cypher. Coded with its history, embalmed in geological time. A stone is water disguised. That sentence is worth repeating. A stone is water disguised. These three stones that have landed on lutruwita, one of which is in front of you, should be considered ambassadors. They are every stone displaced. Lift your eyes briefly from the page. That stone wall your gaze landed on, the one weathered, worn and maybe even defaced, is someone’s Country. Country transmogrified by colonial hands. But Country nonetheless – this is what we mean when we say Always Was and Always Will Be. Country persists. These three stones are 881 stones, skipped across the surface of the continent in one unbroken chain, a songline of stones shared across nations.
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See the work at each site, Blinking Billy Point, Alexandra Battery, Princes Park Battery
Back to Making Ground Artist Statements
CONSTANCE acknowledges and respects the Palawa people as the traditional and ongoing owners and custodians of lutruwita. We pay our respects to elders past, present and future, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
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