Edge of the Trees, Museum of Sydney

The Edge of the Trees is an art installation by Fiona Foley and Janet Laurence commissioned as part of the development of the Museum of Sydney, which opened in May 1995. Althought most often referred to as an art installation, it is also a memorial that calls to mind not only the local Eora peoples or the colonisers and convicts of Sydney's history, but the painful history of their relationship to each other.
The title of the artwork is taken from a passage of text by Rhys Jones (1985) describing the moment of first contact between Aboriginal people and colonisers:

...the discoverers struggling through the surf were met on the beaches by other people looking at them form the edges of the trees. Thus the same landscape perceived by the newcomers as alien, hostile or having no coherent form, was to the indigenous people their home, a familiar place, the inspiration of dreams.

The Museum of Sydney is a heritage site located where the State's original Government House once stood. Just on the other side of the entry path, visitors to the Museum of Sydney and view the excavated foundations of this early colonial building through a glass display case. It is designed to be passed through by visitors on their way into the museum, but is set off to the side, so this is optional.

For those people who do choose to enter, the installation offers a strangely overwhelming experience, considering that it is near a very busy road in the centre of Sydney. Visitors find themselves surrounded by posts, a little bit like tree trunks but made of a variety of different materials that reference the history of Sydney, including aged timber, sandstone, and industrial steel girders. Some of the posts are inscribed with words: Eora place names; the names of convicts; fragments of colonials text. Others contain materials that reference the kinds of keeping and categorising that might be found within a museum, but also refer to Eora culture: ash, sand, shells.
Alongside these visual and tactile elements are sound recordings in both Eora and English. The artwork does not tell the story of colonisation, and may be 'unreadable' for visitors who don't already know this history. But, much like any memorial, for someone who understands something of the story it creates a sense of complexity and sadness.
Edge of the Trees was created in the 1990s, during Australia's official decade of Reconciliation. But Janet Laurence, an Aboriginal artist, has said that both the process of creation and the artwork itself were more about negotiated co-existence than reconciliation.

Questions:

Where is the line between an artwork and a memorial, if the artwork is about memory?